For those of you in New Jersey...

Waterfront property is a wonderful thing. I feel compelled, however, to bring up the politically incorrect and yet cold, hard and irrefutable truth about this situation that will never get brought up in the news media: Yes, waterfront property is indeed a wonderful thing, except when the ocean or river or wind driven lake waters rises above normal levels. And here is the irrevocable, inexorable, immutable truth about waterfront property:

 As sure as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West; As sure as the Pope is Catholic and the bear does what a bear does in the woods; As sure as a bottle of Scotch will be guzzled on the Kennedy compound within the hour; SOONER OR LATER, THE WATER WILL RISE ABOVE NORMAL LEVELS ON ANY WATERFRONT PROPERTY, AND THE MASS OF WATER WILL EITHER DESTROY OR GREATLY DAMAGE ANY MAN MADE STRUCTURES PRESENT, AND IT WILL KILL, GREATLY MAIM OR OTHERWISE DISTRESS ANY LAND LIVING CREATURE THAT CHOOSES TO BE ON THIS PARTICULAR WATERFRONT PROPERTY WHEN THAT EVENT INEXORABLY HAPPENS.

This fact is not even arguable.

 The only issue that people will debate is WHEN something like this WILL happen, but not IF it will happen. True, it may be decades, centuries or even millenia between such events, but they will still happen given the passage of time. Columnist Steven Chapman brought up a salient point in his column in the Chicago Tribune a few years ago when he opined that the more affluent and civilized we become, the more clamoring there is among the anointed elite that we need to “live in harmony with Mother Nature.” Mr. Chapman’s point is that we have a paradox here: “Mother Nature has NEVER lived in harmony with US.”

 Mother Nature has killed more folks than all of the despots and tyrants, wars and other manmade calamities combined over the span of human history. Since we have emerged from the ooze, mankind has had to fight Mother Nature tooth and nail to survive. Over the many millennia, humans have largely figured out where to put down the tent stakes in our best effort in beating Mother Nature’s wrath, but there are still those who have yet to figure out that if you choose to live in the path that Mother Nature stomps on from time to time, then those souls have opted to dramatically increase their chances of removing themselves from the gene pool at worst, or greatly distressing their lives at best. I would lump everyone in this category who builds their permanent residence on flood plains, on muddy hillsides, and on waterfront property WITHOUT INSURANCE.

 Most of those wretches you see on TV hurricane or tsunami coverage wandering the streets with only the shirts on their backs in all likelihood had their entire life’s assets assembled in a shotgun shack near the beach, and had no backup plan or insurance. We call folks such as these either stupid idiots, or far more likely, they are the nation’s poorest of poor who cannot afford to live elsewhere, and like others of the world who find themselves in this situation, are constantly exposed to the ravages of Mother Nature and are sooner or later naturally selected to be excluded from the gene pool. Sadly, and I wish it were not so, but this is the way it always has been, and it is the way it always will be, much to the dismay and disbelief of the utopian imbeciles that populate the news desks across the US and elsewhere.

 I still enjoy sipping a girly-looking drink with an umbrella in it on the various beaches in the Caribbean from time to time. And yes, I do expose myself to the hazards of this environment. Hurricane season in the Caribbean is to be avoided, and I avoid it. I still swim in the cobalt-blue water, and enjoy it immensely, even though I run the risk of being gobbled up by a man-eating shark. These are risks I willing take, and the actuarial odds of me taking a hit during these times are minimal. But should I choose to live permanently on these beaches, and even take it one step farther by sitting in the water with a pound of raw hamburger in my hand for 12 hours a day, then my odds of getting hammered by Mother Nature or her menacing creatures goes up considerably. Sometimes Mother Nature is just plain meaner than a junkyard dog, and not everyone can live in the mansion on the hill; there simply is not enough room for everybody up there.

What can I do about it?

Nothing, and neither can anyone else.