I'm going to clarify this, since obviously political correctness trumps reality: there are some people in some high places, wearing suits and ties, walking around in Steve Maddens on marble floors, leaning up against limestone walls and putting their butts aged relic leather seats under fancy chandeliers that will tell you that "Puerto Ricans are every bit as American as anyone else." What they won't tell you is that over a hundred Puerto Ricans have lost their lives serving in the United States military and yet Puerto Ricans are not offered the chance to vote for President. They have no representation in either the House or the Senate. Puerto Ricans are stuck on an island waaaaay off the coast of the United States and hindered by the Jones Act, which makes everything more expensive for them and makes transporting goods to Puerto Rico doubly as expensive as it is to transport goods to neighboring nations that are not part of the United States. Their energy costs are twice as high as the rest of the United States. Their population is declining rapidly because they are, of course, free to move to the United States and gain all of the rights and privileges of an American citizen, including all of those above, but despite being legally termed American citizens while in Puerto Rico, they sport very few, if any, of the regular rights of citizens. Their unemployment is vastly higher than that of the United States. The median income of people in Puerto Rico is barely above what would result from the federal minimum wage, which explains why many businesses can't afford to hire people - they can't afford the federal minimum wage. The fucked up actions of the government there means that nobody is ever going to want anything to do with investing in Puerto Rico or otherwise trying to bring Puerto Rico into the sphere that Americans in the 50 states live within.
If Puerto Ricans "are every bit as American as anyone else," then feel free to help me understand why the only time they're treated like Americans instead of second-class citizens - quite literally, they're citizens that don't get treated like citizens - is when the second major hurricane in a two week span is headed their direction.
Now, since you can't, get off your high horse. Puerto Rico isn't a state, it's a territory, and our territories are comprised of citizens regarded as second-class citizens. If by some magic it became a state any time remotely soon, half of the people in this country would think it's full of rapists and criminals because obviously Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and anyone of any Latin descent are all trying to steal our jobs and steal our country. Not to mention that they're all actually Mexicans. Duh.
Now that I got that off my chest...
What is misleading is to say that a hurricane is making landfall in the United States when it is, in fact, making landfall in Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, or fucking Guam for all I care. To the regular Billy Bob Murican, a hurricane making landfall in the United States is making landfall on the East Coast, in the Gulf, or maaaaybe every once awhile on the West Coast, not the Caribbean. If your goal is to be politically correct, then sure, go ahead and call little islands around the world the United States and set off alarms in millions more heads than you necessarily have to, but if that's your prerogative, then Billy Bob Murican is going to panic and flip a shit over the fact that there's a major hurricane making landfall. Cater to something incorrect if that's what most people know and understand most easily and for goodness sake don't expect people to be smart or aware of any local situation, because they never fucking are.
Good example - in 2013, a week after I left Oklahoma on the most shit-your-pants worthy chase ever (the chase that actually got me seriously into chasing, no less), the widest tornado ever recorded dropped as a multi vortex swirl in a field in El Reno. It grew, within minutes, just like the Moore tornado did, from a mean baby to a mean giant, and within just a few more minutes, it was over 2.5 miles wide with at least 6 subvortices within it. Here's a photo.
http://tinyurl.com/ybdbmwj3
It's a fun game of Where's Waldo, really, trying to find the tornado in that photo, because the whole fucking photo is the tornado. Anyway.
Some smart (/s) weatherman named Mike Morgan, who by the way didn't get fired and still works at KFOR in Oklahoma City, decided to tell people that this tornado, which at one point had peak winds of around 300 MPH, was going to impact them and that people without underground shelters should hop in their cars and hit the road south. Because people are dumb, thousands of people hit the streets south of Oklahoma City during rush hour and were all trying to go in the same direction - south. Traffic became a standstill. People tried the northbound lanes, going south. Lots of wrecks, lots of stupidity, and again, traffic became a standstill. Only by the grace of a god I don't believe in did that tornado pull up before it hit any one of the highways that all of these people were on. The death toll would have been in the high 3 digits. Instead, it was 9, and all of those people got to go back home. Had they stayed home and the wrath of that El Reno storm hit them, the damage would have been of biblical proportions, but they would have been in at least a somewhat sturdy home instead of a car with far better chances. By leaving, they were in a more dangerous situation than they were at home simply because everyone else was making the same panicky choice.
In the case of Hurricane Irma, the mass exodus out of southern Florida was honestly pretty epic. A trip up to the panhandle took over 24 hours. Lines at gas stations - the ones that actually had gas, that is - were hours long. Grocery shelves were empty. Cars were broken down on the side of the road and abandoned because roadside assistance couldn't actually get to them. Of course, the forecast of Irma wasn't particularly wrong; in fact, the hurricane stayed inside the always-faithful NWS cone throughout its entire track, from east of the Leewards through Florida and inland. That said, the hype of a major hurricane barreling inland created a panic, and whether justified or not, people panicking is bad. Maria isn't going to be here for 5-6 days and may not make landfall at all, so that would be an unjustified panic. So if all that you have to do in order to prevent that is cater to people's wrong understanding of Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, etc., as not part of the United States, why mislead? Why expect dumb, panicky people to be smart all of a sudden? Makes no sense. That's why forecasters that aren't named Mike Morgan try their best not to do that.
Of course, you're again going to simply say that Puerto Rico is the United States, and again you're going to be completely right but in Billy Bob Murica's mind oh so wrong, so I don't even know why I typed out this whole thing anyway.
How to play Cuba in Empire4?
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