Flood Tragedy -- and U.S. Government Tragedy

As Mr. Dylan pointed out, you don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Texas suffered a terrible tragedy: torrential rains, exacerbated by an exceptional conjunction of slow-moving storms, caused destructive flooding that killed 100 people, including kids at a Christian summer camp right where two rivers meet.

That’s heartbreaking. Everyone’s sympathies go out to folks there, particularly parents and siblings of dead children.

Sympathy doesn’t mean ignoring causes. Empathy should impel us all to contemplate why this happened, so violently, and how we might improve our future.

Many wondered how the National Weather Service performed, after slews of DOGE-inspired firings, particularly of experts. It seems to have done well, predicting heavy rain and floods. The viciousness of the storm, and exact rainfall, couldn’t have been predicted precisely, but NWS warned appropriately. But the Warning Coordination Meteorologist, responsible for making damned sure those messages were heard and heeded, then coordinate with local officials, had been “bought out” in the DOGE madness, leaving the position vacant. Yeah, maybe Texas officials should do their jobs and folks living by rivers should watch for warnings; but the hundred dead folks and their families might have favored paying a WCM to ensure warnings were heard and understood.

Of course, Trump plans to have wealthy private pals take over our weather predicting. Less “government.” Huge profits for his pals, whom we’ll pay to do what government did. If some summer camp wants the most accurate weather data, well, that might be too expensive.

The flood’s root cause? Most all reputable scientists agree that we’re experiencing what I’ll term “climate craziness,” because it’s more serious and dangerous than “climate change” suggests and its symptoms include more than greater global heat. Climate craziness is serious. We can no longer prevent it. Experts differ on how much we can mitigate the disaster. It threatens to make many places uninhabitably warm and kill vulnerable people. Our greed and carelessness have caused or greatly magnified it. More and higher floods, bigger wildfires, and and increasingly violent storms, are facts of life.

Mr. Trump claims it’s a Chinese or Democratic “hoax.”

Trump is demonstrably wrong. Many Texans voted to reinstall him in the Casa Blanca. He’s abusing their faith.

It should matter to them that he’s ignoring forces that are killing their children and will make lives miserable for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Seas are rising, glaciers melting, temperatures consistently higher, and these forces compound to cause much of what we’re suffering. Mr. Trump is in denial. (Of course, for decades, denying climate change and minimizing its significance have kept many politicians of both parties in office.

Mr. Trump is cutting government efforts to prevent or predict disasters, thus hindering preparations for the extreme weather he refuses to cooperate with the rest of the world in trying to mitigate. He’s cutting FEMA, which passed out post-disaster bandaids. As Ruidoso folks can testify, those “bandaids” help tremendously when someone’s lost everything in a flood. Washington is also cutting off health benefits for millions of people whose health might get hammered by wildfire smoke, higher temperatures, and/or pollution. (We need to save money to cut rich folks’ taxes.) Our government is also easing regulations, so’s corporations can do what they do more freely and maximize both profit and poisons.

If my kid had died this month, in a flood, with that context, I think I’d notice the connection.

                                                        – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 13 July, 2025, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, and on the newspaper’s website (sub nom "Trump's Cuts Hinder Extreme Weather Preparedness" ) and the KRWG website (under Local Viewpoints). A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). That website also contains station show archives.]

[Remarkably, one MAGA Congresswoman from Georgia tried to claim the tragic Guadalupe River flooding was “fake news,” eventually backing up to the weird statement that the damage was real but the weather fake, apparently under the impression that cloud-seeding (which is mostly ineffective) was the explanation, not the conditions the experts all spoke of. I wonder how that sat with the two Congressfolk (one from Texas, one from Georgia) whose daughters were at that Christian Camp, though fortunately they both survived. The anti-science theme of Trump’s COVID nonsense and Robert Kennedy’s anti-vax machinations continues.]

Feeling Compassion for a Beleaguered Child Who Got Older

Watering tomatoes this morning, I glanced up and watched Foxy watch me. We inherited Foxy, a red-heeler mix, from a woman my wife was helping through her last years of life. Foxy had had a hard life, but blossomed here. Although initially she distrusted male humans, and I worried she’d be a pain, we’ve come to love each other.

That’s a simple experience Donald Trump has never had. He seems never to have had a pet. Well, what could the pet do for him? (What he could do for a dog or cat is a question that wouldn’t occur to him.)

Later, during a break from writing, the internet played a bit of Jason Carter’s memorial speech about his grandfather, Jimmy. Loved the part about hanging zip-lock bags up to dry for re-use. My wife has us doing that, too. And the Carters being small-town folks who never forgot who they were. A cutaway showed Donald Trump, scowling, then the Bidens and others laughing at the laugh lines.

I felt sorry again for Mr. Trump. He was raised by a Father obsessed with making more money. Donald and his siblings learned to compete for money and status, not to love. Or give.

Next, the Internet showed me Robin Williams, in Good Will Hunting, released twenty-five years ago, making that great speech telling the young genius, Will, that although Will could write a book on Michelangelo, he can’t tell us how the Sistine Chapel smells, or how it feels to look up at that marvelous ceiling; and that while he’s memorized Shakespeare’s love sonnets, he has never loved enough to be vulnerable, never loved a woman “so much she can level you with a glance,” or sat in her hospital room during her last months.

Some people know those feelings. Others avoid them. I don’t envy you, Donald. I envy men who stayed married to and loving a single woman all their adult lives, raising children the best they could to be loving, caring, confident, honest folks. Men who showed a steadiness neither you nor I ever did. You touched women without permission – the sign of a man who needs to bully women, not one seeking love, or even sex. Seduction takes a gentler mode.

Sorry, Donald. We’re 79 this year. I’m sorry your life has been so limited by your fear of real feelings, real friendship, love, or the sensation of wandering alone into a new country, having no common language with the folks there, humble as a baby in their culture, but smiling while they laugh at you. You’ve never been writing and suddenly teared up because your fictional characters lost a child or learned some painful truth. Have you ever truly loved a woman, as more than a status symbol, sexual release, or appropriate decoration for a life designed to impress folks?

I’m nobody. But when I die, if I’m able to reflect, I won’t regret having so few worldly accomplishments. I’ll regret moments I chickened out, didn’t ask the hard question, didn’t provide a kindness, I could have, didn’t go deeper into the Peruvian jungle, the Tibetan mountains, or the mind of a character, or didn’t love enough.

I’m sorry your father and mother didn’t teach you love and integrity, and exemplify those. I took all that for granted, mostly rebelled, and only later appreciated – and had time to tell them I appreciated – what they gave me.

                                     – 30 –

 [This is an odd and personal column. It illustrates how, in so many quiet moments in our pleasant personal lives, Mr. Trump and the dangers he and his confederates pose to the republic can suddenly insert themselves. But it takes a more human look at him. By the way, this is a sensible discussion of Trump's psyche by a man who has written a book on the subject. See also his nice, Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough. ]

[Posting a link on Facebook to this site, mentioning compassion for Donald Trump, and recognizing how odd that likely sounds, I felt I should add: 1 Nothing in this column excuses or justifies any of his personal or political bad conduct, though it may help explain something. 2. Compassion for Donald Trump will sound particularly weird to folks who hate him.  However, would you really like to be stuck inside his head -- to BE Donald Trump, with all his inner pain that he's trying to get back at the world for?  How would that FEEL?] 

[ A point that deserves elaboration: as a young lawyer, I had an experience that taught me a lot. When I summered at a huge San Francisco firm, and later accepted employment there, a young lawyer was particularly prominent. Despite his relative youth, he spoke with a certain authority. The partners thought highly of him. And after I was employed there, we were acquaintances, though not particularly close. Over the course of a year or two, I formed close relationships with various young women employed there; and three different women, a Mexican-American secretary, a receptionist who was also an artist; and a woman who worked in document-processing, each told me privately that Carter [no, not his real name] had hit on them sexually in rather appalling ways. The secretary [a tough young lady who, when I once carped about her wearing nail polish, looked me sternly in the eye and said, “When I picked fruit in the fields beside my parents, it made a mess of my hands and nails, and I swore I’d get out of there, and I’ll wear nail polish whether you like it or not.”] seemed sweet and deferential, and probably Catholic, and he called her into his office to see the sunset and asked, “Don’t I deserve a kiss for that?”; the receptionist, he commented on her mammaries; and I forget how he came on to the third lady; but in each case, he was talking to a woman of lower status at the law firm and who likely seemed to him likely to be intimidated, or; in each case, he insulted her or seemed almost threatening; but none of these “advances” were designed to lead to an affair. He was a very smart fellow; I’m sure that, had he wanted to talk someone into an affair, he knew how to do it; but he was simply being pointlessly cruel and domineering. (Eventually, complaints on the subject reached the firm’s leading partners, and led them to suggest he go practice law somewhere else.) In the same way, Mr. Trump’s conduct is designed to bully, not to generate love or even satisfy lust. It’s a need he has to reassure us (and himself) that he matters.]