I think I’m suffering from outrage overload. I just don’t want to write about anything anymore. There’s too much that needs to be said, and I have too little time, energy and talent to do it justice. I find myself just sitting here, staring at my screen, paralyzed by the thought that, as soon as I hit “publish,” there will be ten other things that deserve more attention than whatever it was that I just wrote about. And, really, if we’re being completely honest, what good does posting here even do? Maybe, if I’m lucky, 1,000 people read something that I’ve written, 50 of whom “like” it on Facebook, and maybe 3 or 4 share it on Twitter, where it quickly gets lost in the ocean of memes.
Today, I found myself wondering, if, in the whole scheme of things, I would have had more of a positive impact in the world, if, 15 years ago, instead of starting this blog, I’d started working a part-time night job, donating whatever I’d made to an organization, like the ACLU, that could have put it to good use. I mean, I know some people out there find value in what I write here, and I know that some positive things have happened as a result of this blog over the years, but, looking at it objectively, I’m tempted to say that I could have accomplished more if I’d taken the 25 hours or so a week that I’ve worked on this site, spent that time instead working behind the counter at Starbucks, and funneled whatever I made into something more impactful. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I could find a second job that would pay $10 a hour, and worked 25 hours a week – that’s $13,00 a year before taxes. And just think how many copies of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny I could buy for that and leave on city busses with that, or how many scholarships I could help fund for promising young journalists. But, instead, I choose to spend my time, like I am right now, thinking about clever ways to twist a serious post about global climate change so that I can work in a mention of Donald Trump’ new baseball cap or our First Lady’s inappropriate choice for flood zone footwear…
[above: While Trump, during his brief stop in Texas today, didn’t mention the fact that over a dozen Americans thus far had lost their lives as a result of Hurricane Harvey, did take the opportunity to introduce a new hat, which is available through his website for $40, the proceeds from which will not go to charity, but to him directly.]
Sorry to drag you into this. I guess I’m just feeling a bit defeated at the moment, like nothing really matters. I think it’s Hurricane Harvey’s fault… Apparently, I can handle the idea that Trump conspired with the Russians to steal the presidency, but I can’t handle images of American highways under 20 feet of water. I guess it’s because, in the case of Trump, there might still be a real, tangible solution available to us. Robert Mueller, assuming he can prove there were crimes committed, could theoretically set in motion a chain of events that not only drives Trump from the White House in disgrace, but puts him in prison. In the case of the so-called “500-year storm” that just hit the Texas coast, though, what is there that we can really do? We’ve allowed ourselves to be lied to over the past 30 years about global climate change, and now we really don’t have much choice, as far as I can tell, but to accept the consequences. I suppose, if we acted quickly, and decisively, we might avoid the worst of it, but there’s not really any turning back now, is there? We’re well down the path to extinction, and there’s no sign that our leaders want to even try to change course, despite what we’re seeing unfold… Trump is still telling us that he intends to open more coal mines, and his fellow Republicans continue to question climate science, even as these “once in a lifetime” events keep happening, and more people keep losing their lives.
So, yeah, I feel a bit defeated by the collective stupidity of the American people at the moment… those people who chose to elect a man completely devoid of empathy to be our leader… a man who, instead of comforting those who have lost everything, chose today to note the size of the crowd that had come out in the rain to see him.
[above: “What a crowd, what a turnout,” Trump declares triumphantly in Texas, as though he’s on the campaign trail, and not standing in a state where some have lost everything.]
It’s not just Trump, though. It’s everything that made Trump possible. All the years spent convincing the American people that laws protecting their clean drinking water were somehow anti-American. The fake news networks suggesting that our first black president wasn’t an American at all, but a Kenyan marxist who had been programmed from birth to destroy our country. The defunding of public education. The acceptance of corporate dollars as free speech. The false equivalency between what scientists say on one side of a debate, and what lobbyists say on the other… We’ve spent decades chipping away at the very foundation of America, and this is what we’re left with. Trump isn’t an aberration. Trump, I’d argue, is a perfect reflection of America as it exists today.
And yet we keep telling ourselves that all of this might somehow change. The New York Times asked today, if Hurricane Harvey offered Trump “an opportunity to recapture some of the unifying power of his office. The answer, of course, is an emphatic “no.” It just gave Trump an opportunity to model a new “USA” baseball cap, which, by the way, you can purchase for $40 on his website, and talk excitedly about how this “record breaking” flood was making members of his administration “famous on television,” all while absolutely ignoring the dead and the suffering.
But, yes, some apparently thought that the man who, just a few years ago, said the following about his predecessor’s response to a natural disaster, might someone evolve into a better man… someone seeking to harness the “unifying power of his office.”
No, my friends, the world sucks, and we’re all going to die… Yes, I know that there was a lot of beauty to be seen in Houston, as individual Americans stepped forward to help one another, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re too short-sighted, stupid and fearful to deserve a big, beautiful planet like this one that we’ve been given.
[above: I want to believe that scenes, like this one above, reflect who we actually are as Americans more than the fact that we’ve chosen leaders like Trump, Cruz and Cornyn, but I don’t think it does. In response to accute emergencies, we tend to do the right thing as a nation, and I have no doubt there will be epic demonstrations of love and decency as we approach extinction, but we lack the ability in our daily lives to get beyond our fear and anger, and work together toward a better future. And that will be our undoing.]
Just two quick illustrations of how short-sighted and stupid we are, before I throw my laptop across the room and proceed to cry myself to sleep.
First, from Newsweek, we have a clip from an incredible piece about how freedom from regulation helped make the events unfolding in Houston today possible.
We do value our freedom here in Texas. As I write from soggy Central Texas, the cable news is showing people floating down Buffalo Bayou on their principles, proud residents of the largest city in these United States that did not grow in accordance with zoning ordinances.
The feeling there was that persons who own real estate should be free to develop it as they wish. Houston, also known as the Bayou City, is a great location because of its access to international shipping in the Gulf of Mexico. It is not a great location for building, though, because of all its impervious cover. If water could easily sink into the ground, there would be less of it ripping down Houston’s rivers that just a week ago were overcrowded streets…
Houston was built without regard for the carrying capacity of its roads, just as it was built without regulating the amount of impervious cover that would be shedding water into streets, storm sewers, rivers and Buffalo Bayou…
And, second, we have this from Vox about Trump’s recent rollback of Obama era flood preparedness standards.
Since 2015, infrastructure projects paid for by federal dollars have had to plan ahead for floods and water damage. But when Houston and surrounding towns start to rebuild after floodwaters recede from Tropical Storm Harvey, they won’t be required to plan ahead for the next big storm.
That’s because on August 15, President Trump rolled back the Federal Flood Risk Mitigation Standard, an Obama-era regulation. The 2015 directive, which never fully went into effect, required public infrastructure projects that received taxpayer dollars to do more planning for floods, including elevating their structures to avoid future water damage and alleviate the burden on taxpayers.
Trump characterized his move as repealing an onerous government regulation and streamlining the infrastructure approval process. But he was criticized by both environmental groups and conservatives, who said it made sense to try to protect federal investments.
…The federal government spent about $277 billion on relief aid from 2005 to 2014, responding to natural disasters like Harvey, according to a 2016 report from the federal Government Accountability Office.
Flood mitigation projects, however, got only a fraction of federal money — the same GAO report found that FEMA spent only about $600 million on mitigation efforts in the same time span.
The flood risk mitigation regulation was supposed to help reverse that trend. While elevating structures would cost more money upfront, the Obama administration reasoned they would save taxpayers more in the long run, so they wouldn’t have to keep shelling out money to rebuild destroyed buildings. Flood mitigation has a 4-1 payback, experts say.
So the Federal Flood Risk Mitigation Standard tried to reduce flood risk with a three-pronged approach:
– It encouraged new projects to be built on higher ground, away from flood-prone areas.
– New infrastructure projects also had to be flood-proofed — new roads and railways would have to be 2 feet above the 100-year flood elevation standard and new hospitals 3 feet above.
– Infrastructure projects also had the option to build to standards so they would be safe from a 500-year flood — an extreme but low-probability event on the scale of Hurricane Harvey.
So, yeah, that’s where we are today… pushing fossil fuels over renewables, cutting regulations in the name of freedom without any thought as to the ramifications, and rolling back legislation intended to mitigate the effects of global warming… And, for what it’s worth, none of this has anything to do with Donald Trump. We started down this path a long, long time ago, and it doesn’t look as though we’ll be leaving it any time soon.
