In Impromptus today, I write, “So, the tornado in Oklahoma? I have heard it blamed on 1) global warming and 2) the sequester. You know, it may have been less annoying when people just blamed stuff on the Jews . . .” (This is a column with its hair down.)

I thought we could have a walk down Memory Lane — to 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a piece called “All the Uglier,” I wrote,

Katrina was an occasion to rehearse all of one’s fears and opinions and obsessions about the War on Terror, global warming, capitalism, the federal budget, race. Katrina was an invitation to bust a political gut.

And,

To an amazing extent, global warming has become all-explaining. It is the cause of our natural ills, in all their diversity. It is an idée fixe, a universal bogey. Just as the Jew is both a communist and a capitalist, and the American both a materialist and a puritan, global warming is responsible for heat and cold, drought and flood — anything nature might be throwing at us at the moment. When Al Gore gives a speech on global warming, he is apt to say, “We’ve been having some weird weather lately, haven’t we?” The word weird covers a multitude of conditions.

We have always had weather. We have always had severe weather. We have always had tornadoes, in Oklahoma and nearby states. There was once a movie set in Kansas, before it was set in Oz. There was this little dog, and this twister.

Anyway, natural disasters bring out the best in us, people say. True. It also brings out some weird and lamentable stuff.