A sinkhole has formed on the White House lawn

A sinkhole has formed on the White House lawn
It seems like it would be, you know, bigger. (Image via Twitter)

A sinkhole has appeared in the White House lawn in recent days, and idiocy sprightly frivolity from humans seems to be the main by-product.

A VOA reporter tweeted early on Tuesday that he’s been watching the sinkhole this week.  (This isn’t part of the idiocy.)

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

He later provided a helpful reference to a statement from the National Park Service.

(Screen cap by author)

That may be the extent of it: recent heavy rains, sinkhole. Kudos to Steve Herman of W7VOA for these sensible contributions.

The rest of the, er, social media discussion is mind-bendingly moronic.

https://twitter.com/ElcStarGarden/status/999112257958236160

https://twitter.com/Memes_the_word_/status/999126111555596288

Where do these folks find the time?

It goes on and on like that.  Some clever folks have determined that exactly one year ago, on 22 May 2017, a sinkhole was reported to have formed just outside Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.  Numerous tweeps have chimed in with that news.

Imagine, a sinkhole in Florida.

It’s rather interesting, however, that there’s so much dismissive snark about this.  There have been reports in recent years of an unusual number of sinkholes in places around the world (also here, here, here, here, here … there’s more, do searches.  There’s a lot out there, but little in the way of a readily accessible, comprehensive view of what’s going on).  This may or may not be something that has significant meaning, or that we have much of a handle on.  But it seems worth noting.

Presumably, if there have been sinkholes on the White House grounds before, or nearby on the National Mall, there are records of that.  It would be interesting to know if we do know something useful about this.

Perhaps it fits a pattern we’ve seen in the past.  Maybe it doesn’t fit anything we have records of.

For me, it sparked the memory of a story we carried a headline on in January, about groundwater levels in Florida showing a change after the magnitude 7.9 earthquake (on 23 January 2018) in the Gulf of Alaska.

Now Kilauea is undergoing an epic eruption, involving an equally mighty interplay of energy.

Not being a geologist or volcanologist, I must leave further hypothesizing to the experts.  That said, I’m not sure how certain we really are about what’s going on under the surface of the earth, and how things are interconnected.

Meanwhile, the rush to joke about occult forces, when the sinkholes are on properties occupied by a particular president, seems to indicate that our mindset as a species hasn’t changed very much from what it was 5,000 or 6,000 years ago.  All it takes is Trump being a factor, and presto: the urge to un-science conquers all.

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer is a retired Naval Intelligence officer who lives in Southern California, blogging as The Optimistic Conservative for domestic tranquility and world peace. Her articles have appeared at Hot Air, Commentary’s Contentions, Patheos, The Daily Caller, The Jewish Press, and The Weekly Standard.

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