We sit transfixed, watching Hurricane Harvey devastate our fourth largest city with a volume of water that could fill the Great Salt Lake –twice. We are buoyed by the heroism on display. In addition to the Coast Guard, the National Guard and the Houston Police Department, scores of ordinary citizens, from Louisiana’s Cajun Navy to journalists who drop the mic to save a drowning woman, have renewed our faith in Americans’ common humanity. It is comforting to know that when confronted by epic disaster, we still rise to the challenge. That is more than can be said for Trump, who sits on the sidelines inanely tweeting like a “weather pundit.” (h/t Jon Favreau – Pod Save America, 8/28/17). FEMA rescue efforts are succeeding in spite of him, given that Trump has proposed cutting FEMA’s budget by $667 million, the National Flood Insurance Program by $190 million and that of the National Weather Service by $62 million. Trump was not alone in showing his worst qualities in the face of disaster. Insufferable Texas Senator Ted Cruz bristled at the reminder of his callous vote against Hurricane Sandy relief, now that his constituents needed help. Prosperity Gospel pimp Joel Osteen refused to open his bone dry mega church to Texans fleeing life threatening conditions until he’d been shamed on Twitter for hours and exposed as a liar by The New York Post.
Crises reveal who people are at their core. Thus, it is hardly surprising that Trump showed himself to be a vengeful attention whore lacking in empathy, admitting that he announced the Arpaio pardon on Friday because he knew that the hurricane would guarantee high television ratings. More poignantly, though, this crisis also reveals who Americans are, at our core. When jolted by crisis, we respond empathetically, emptying our wallets, racing into danger with our boats and looking out for neighbors and strangers. In the absence of the spectacle of a “500 year storm,” though, we are frighteningly inattentive. We’ve ignored the reality of climate change that makes those storms more frequent and more destructive. Too many of us voted for politicians who promised to cut our taxes by slashing government spending, not realizing that someday that government spending would be required to re-build OUR flood ravaged cities and homes. We didn’t pay attention to the fact that our fraying 60-70 year old infrastructure was not built to withstand the reality of 21st Century weather.
Such are the dangers of our national Attention Deficit Disorder. The signs of impending disaster were all around us and had we taken one of any number of steps, the impact would have lessened. As a nation, we prefer blissful ignorance to knowledge that requires action. With Trump as president, though, our inattention can be fatal. Just yesterday, serial perjurer and committed racist, Jeff Sessions, announced that the DOJ had rescinded the Obama era rule prohibiting the shipment of military weapons to local police departments. On the heels of the Arpaio pardon, it is clear that Trump is empowering a nation of mini-Arpaios to declare war on Black and Brown Americans. Trump has made common cause with white supremacists and anti-Semites and he is arming them to prey upon us and leave us without a remedy in court. Samuel Sinyangwe of Mapping Police Violence, has a thread with concrete steps you can take to combat the militarization of local law enforcement (@samswey, Twitter thread 8/28/17). We’d better pay attention, because the next hurricane is headed our way.
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