There are, of course, the heartrending facts of Wednesday night's aircraft tragedy.
You find it difficult to turn away from the television screen--hour after hour, as additional details are reported, as we learn more about the collision, and about the lives of those who died on the airplane, and on the Army Black Hawk helicopter. It is terribly saddening.
There is also this: that there is invariably, with air disasters, a sense of eeriness. You see the indistinct video images of the Potomac crash, far in the distance. You hear the last communications with the helicopter, from Air Traffic Control: suddenly, no reply from the helicopter. Just silence. You looked at all of the nighttime airport lights, the darkness of the Potomac, the many flashing lights of the rescue vehicles. Later, images of parts of the plane which remained above the water (including a section of the fuselage) were shown; they are sad, and haunting, to see. We may not get an answer (or, at least, a definitive one) for some time, about the basic mystery of why the tragedy happened.
Yet, the day after it occurred, it was deeply troubling (though, really, not surprising) to see the President--as bodies were still being recovered, and as the investigation was in its earliest stages--holding forth about the crash, at a news conference. The man who knows so little about so much pointed to what he saw as possible culprits: he rambled at length about DEI, questioning the capabilities of the F.A.A. and Air Traffic Control (although conceding, at one point, that “We don’t know that necessarily it’s even the controller’s fault"), attacked the Obama and Biden administrations, and in particular former Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (“He was a disaster as a mayor. He ran his city into the ground and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullshit"); he also questioned the actions of the helicopter pilot. I can't imagine what the loved ones of the dead were feeling, as they watched this disturbing display.
On Thursday night, I watched an interview with Captain "Sully" Sullenberger, on Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC program. Captain Sullenberger was of course the pilot who (with co-pilot Jeff Skiles) landed USAirways Flight 1549, in January of 2009, on the Hudson River, following bird strikes which shut down the plane's engines; all of the plane's 155 passengers--in what is known as the "Miracle on the Hudson"--survived.
At the end of the interview, Mr. O'Donnell told Captain Sullenberger that he did not want to drag him into the political sphere, but asked if he had any reaction he wished to share, concerning the President's comments earlier in the day. Mr. Sullenberger said, tersely: "Not surprised. Disgusted."
Here are two links about the disaster, and the President's responses to it. The first is from The Washington Post, the second is from the publication Military Times.
