Houston, Filled With Water, Mixed With Tragedy And Irony

Once again, as was the case 12 years ago, the Gulf Coast of the United States and its residents have had their lives disrupted and, in some cases, destroyed, by a storm of the size and fury that once would have been unexpected and even unnatural.  Once again, media stories of tragedy are mixed with media stories of personal heroism, with precious little insight into why the unexpected and unnatural is now a frequent occurrence.  One again, a President ensnared by problems largely of his own making rushes to the scene, and finds ways to make a bad situation worse with his comments. (I mean, really, even Bush knew enough to meet with people and hug them.)

I'm not saying the media shouldn't focus on the human angle in covering Hurricane Harvey.  It's essential to know when people are suffering, and to do what we can to help them.  It's also essential to appreciate and to be inspired by the heroes; they deserve the respect, and they inspire others to do more of the same.

But, before I can be accused of politicizing a tragedy, let's be clear that we're talking about a well that has already been poisoned, in particular by Donald Trump's pardoning of an unforgivable racists, former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio without any of the customary Justice Department input that normally precedes a decision to issue a Presidential pardon.  Trump used the media coverage of the Harvey tragedy to slip Arpaio's pardon under the radar, bragged about doing so when asked, and brought condemnation on himself in the process from both Democrats and Republicans.

And beyond that, real compassion and wisdom requires us to do what we can to avoid the creation of future victims, as well as the need for good people to take the risks involved in being heroes.

So, what are the politics here?  There's a lot of politics here.  All of it laced with irony.

Let's start with the old cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words.  Here are pictures of the devastation brought about by Harvey, which have already generated millions of words.

Looks like a disaster movie, doesn't it?  Frankly, it looks even more like an Al Gore movie to me. You remember Gore; the man actually elected President in 2000 until the Supreme Court said otherwise? The man who peddles the "hoax" of climate change?  Look at either of his movies on the subject, and tell me that those Harvey photos don't fit right in to them.

It's been difficult for me to suppress my I-told-you-so instinct when it comes to looking at the news footage that's come out of East Texas in the past few weeks.  I do so out of a regard for thousands of innocent victims who don't deserve this regardless of their politics.  But I'm willing to unleash that instinct full-force on the politicans that Texans and red state voters everywhere (especially in Gulf states).  Nowhere are they worse than they are in Texas, especially when it comes to governors. From Bush through Perry and Abbott, the Lone Star State has been led by "leaders" who have lined their pockets at the expense of their public responsibilities, especially when it comes to the impact of business on the environment.

Consider, for example, the stories in the early phase of the Harvey disaster about chemical smells in the air over Houston.  The smells, of course, came from largely unregulated chemical plants, one of which burst in flames not long after the chemical smells fouled the air.  Not surprisingly, we subsequently learned that the plant's corporate owners had successfully lobbied Trump's appointees to delay the implementation of safety rules.  And, even as the flood waters begin to recede, the environmental news gets even worse; the EPA is reporting that as many as 13 Superfund sites may have been damaged by Harvey.  Superfund sites are among the most chemically contaminated sites in the nation; the fact that there are as many as 41 of these sites in the hurricane's path tells you something about the relationship between business and government, at the expense of everyone else.

And the tragedies/ironies don't stop there.  Consider the immigration issue.  Thousands of construction workers will be needed to repair all of the Harvey-related damage.  Thousands of construction workers that we do not have, thanks to restrictionist immigration policies supported and pushed by Republicans in general, and Trump in particular.  The racism behind these policies is made all the more patently obvious by the fact that Trump is refusing to accept aid offered by the Mexican government--a decision, one supposes, that goes hand-in-hand with Trump's planned wall between the two countries.  One would think that a hurricane like Harvey would illustrate the foolishness of the wall project; the next 100-to-500-year storm would easily breach any wall we build.

Consider, also, the immigration issue as it relates not only to race but also to religion.  Houston's largest evangelical megachurch initially closed its doors to displaced victims of Harvey, and only opened them when social media shamed them into doing it.  Not so the case with Houston's mosques and synagogues.  Something to think about, the next time someone from an evangelical church or organization claims to have a monopoly on ultimate truth.  Or the next time you hear that claim from the political puppet of evangelicals, the Republican Party.

Finally, consider the Republican Party itself, the party of as-little-government-as-possible.  Well, there are now a whole lot of Republicans, and people who voted for them in good faith, who will need a whole lot of government to get back on their feet.  And, I'm happy to help them.  But I would be happier still if we could finally have an acknowledgement that, for a nation as big and as complicated and as important as ours, tiny government is not only unrealistic, it is downright dangerous.  Government spending, and (per Oliver Wendell Holmes) the taxes that support it, are the price we pay for civilization.  Harvey shows that they are also, sometimes, the price we pay for survival--and renewal.

There are faint signs already to support the view that there is an emerging new definition of a liberal:  a conservative who has been mugged by global warming.  Maybe there will be more. Maybe, this time, after Katrina and Sandy and now Harvey, the tragedy and irony are finally overwhelming enough that people will be willing to listen.