In mid-July, The New Yorker magazine published a long article entitled “The Future Is Texas.” It was not a flattering portrait of politics in the Lone Star State.
Poisonous conflicts, much of it internecine warfare among factions of the Republican Party, had the state Legislature quarreling bitterly over the rights of transgendered people in public bathrooms, about school vouchers and property-tax rollbacks and the like.
On Aug. 25 Hurricane Harvey made landfall in southern Texas. The foolishness playing out in the state capital was swamped by a real-live calamity.
Incapable of empathy, President Donald Trump reverted to his most fundamental emotional response, narcissistic boasting. Surveying the crowd gathered outside a Corpus Christi firehouse, he cheerfully crowed, “What a crowd. What a turnout.”
His administration, he promised, would “immediately” perform the greatest restoration project in American history. “We want people to look back in five years, 10 years from now (and say), ‘this is the way to do it.’ ”
Meanwhile the sprawling city of Houston, with the fourth largest metropolitan population in the U.S., was taking one of the worst pummelings ever experienced in this country. The acute stage of Houston’s agony lasted for about 10 days, as the storm meandered back and forth, dumping 4 feet of rain on the stricken city.
There is enormous wealth in Houston, from the oil and gas business to agriculture, shipping and finance. It is also rich in human resources. Composed of roughly one-third each of people of African-American, Hispanic and “Anglo” backgrounds, it has lately been hospitable to large numbers of refugees, not only from Latin America, but also from South Asia and Southeast Asia.
Sociologists question whether such diversity makes a community stronger (welcoming immigrants that contribute skills and labor) or more vulnerable (ethnic tribes competing, often violently, for scarce resources). It’s a good question, but Houston might be Exhibit A for those who think diversity is a positive thing.
Efforts by entertainers and professional athletes have raised huge amounts of money to help Houston recover. J.J. Watt, an all-star defensive end for the Houston Texans NFL team, recently closed a major fundraising drive by announcing that his group had raised an astonishing $37,097,298, more than 185 times his initial goal. Over 200,000 people had contributed, meaning Watt and his associates had attracted as many donors as he had initially expected dollars.
The city is urgently considering how best to spend this money. In recent years political leaders, architects, engineers and planners have traveled abroad, to Holland and China among other places, to study the latest technologies for coping with rising sea levels in densely populated areas.
The one-two punches of hurricanes Irma and Maria have wreaked truly awful damage. Puerto Rico has rightly been the focus of much recent publicity. Its 3.5 million American citizens have suffered terrible damage, and despite strong efforts by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other mainland agencies public and private, aid has been slow to reach the island and slower yet to be effectively distributed to areas where the need is most acute.
In the U.S. Virgin Islands, people on St. Thomas have told of cringing in their homes as tornadoes embedded in Irma tore shutters off their houses and threw them at other buildings in the neighborhood.
On neighboring St. John, tarpaulins and building materials are in short supply. Downed trees and other debris have choked the 10-mile road that connects the docks on Cruz Bay with the businesses and homes on Coral Bay. It is practically impossible to get supplies, gasoline, food and potable water across the island.
Owners of damaged property on St. John have suffered huge losses, but many of them have insurance. Many of the homes and businesses owned by native Virgin Islanders, however, are not insured. What happens to them will be a test of Americans’ compassion and sense of justice.
In these appalling conditions, there is little stomach for debates about climate change. Anyone who respects material facts knows that the climate has changed, and it is doing so at an accelerating pace.
Even Texas Sen. Ted Cruz recognizes this. He is left with trying to defend and explain his 2013 vote against aid for New Jersey and New York following tropical storm Sandy. This time he and many of his fellow Republicans seem to be on board, asking for help for Texas and Florida and, we trust, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
It is time to get real. In Houston over the past two or three years, a succession of so-called 100-year and 500-year hurricanes and storms have caused catastrophic damage to homes, neighborhoods and businesses. Hurricanes in the Caribbean, in Florida and across the South, brutal fires up and down the Pacific Coast, ferocious tornadoes and flooding in the Midwest — across the country and around the world, evidence abounds.
It will requite careful planning and huge public investment to meet this challenge. There are signs that some in Washington are preparing to set ideology aside and meet this challenge. Heaven help us if we let greed, cynicism and other dysfunctional instincts sap this momentum.
Don Robinson, a retired professor of government at Smith College in Northampton, writes a regular column published the fourth Thursday of the month. He can be reached at drobinso@smith.edu.