friendly reminder I’m not a journalist I just crash out online if you disagree remember I’m not that important
When I was in the fourth grade my family and I had to evacuate from Mandeville Louisiana, to Folsom, then to Lafayette because of Hurricane Katrina. Where we stayed for three weeks because the power was shut off for that length of time. People always ask me about Katrina expecting a long winded sad story but I was definitely lucky compared to the people I would meet once I started going to high school in New Orleans.
I don’t remember a lot from this part of my life and I didn’t take away any trauma from it (the lord saved that for later) but I remember the discourse, I remember the scrutiny Bush received for his response, I remember Fox News showing black people “looting” stores, and I remember our very pentecostal grandpa literally saying that God had slated NOLA for punishment because it was a place of “sin”. Even as I type that out my stomach starts to twist and suddenly my deepest desire is to find a “God Hates Gays” pentecostal preacher and tell him to shove his ugly sign up his holy posterior. But no sooner had I forgotten this rhetoric, did I see and hear it online during Hurricane Sandy, the Pulse Nightclub shooting, the wildfires in Cali, pretty much anytime a communal tragedy befalls a community that falls outside the perimeter of white, heterosexual and christian, there is some white heterosexual Christian insisting that God is punishing them for their sin (or my favorite softened version of this) “allowing this to happen because of their sin”.
I grew up evangelical, I’m not joking, they really do talk like this in real life. Not just in comment sections on Facebook.
This is one of the reasons why I’m always surprised when conservatives and evangelicals come out after every school shooting to tell outlets, public figures, their friends and family, pretty much anyone who has anything to say about how our lack of gun control laws are directly contributing to the rise of school shooting fatalities that they’re so “insensitive for politicizing this awful tragedy” and offering “thoughts and prayers” to the survivors.
Cheering on predominantly queer communities being burned to the ground due to climate change disasters that’s fine, but calling for gun reform is where they draw the line I GUESS.
With this in mind, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at MAGA’s response to the Texas Floods, which if you aren’t up to date on, at the time of writing this have claimed over 100 Texans lives, several being children at Camp Mystic.
While the tragedy is fresh. Conservatives are hitting their usual talking points. They’ve hastily began insisting any criticism of the government’s response is “politicizing the event”. Over and over again calls for “where’s the empathy?” “How could you have no empathy” “Think of the children” over and over again.
But what has floored me, what has my jaw on the floor, was Karoline Leavitt, most grating woman alive’s statement that this was “God’s Will” and that the administration was in no way responsible for when this flood hit and how things played out…unhinged, and also objectively incorrect.
But let’s follow this logic for a moment, because I want the two republicans that find this and read it to its conclusion for the sake of ragebaiting themselves to really HEAR what this woman implied.
This “Act of God” happened less than a day after the BBB passed knocking 17 million people off their health insurance. And this thing that happened according to “God’s Will” decimated a predominantly white, elderly and conservative community, a red pocket in an already red state. Oh and it happened on the anniversary of the literal birth of our nation.
And the cherry on top, who arrived to help local firefighters before our own government to put together a cohesive response, Mexican firefighters. Who show up and help despite ICE’s raging war on hispanic immigrants.
If you are in this weird fringe minority of people who chalk up climate catastrophes to God’s will, and have placed blame for such catastrophes onto the victims for their perceived “ungodly acts” then I would really suggest you really sit with the events of this past weekend and what that would imply cosmically for you.
But personally, I don’t think it was God’s will. And I think implying that with any genuine sincerity is cruel, idiotic and reductive.
This was not an act of God.
This happened because there were no weather alert sirens in the area, because text alerts for a flash flood are useless if you put your phone on Do Not Disturb and head to bed. This was the result of cutting the NWA, the NOAA and FEMA. This was the result of firing the warning coordination meteorologist the person responsible for working with local emergency managers to plan for floods, who had taken an early retirement package in April because of. *shocker* DOGE’s budget cuts.
This administration is once again hiding behind Jesus’s skirt to shift blame for the deaths that they 100% had a hand in. Their followers will predictably fall in line because they can’t stomach that this is exactly what happens when you run a government like a business. Figures.
God had nothing to do with the deaths of those children in Camp Mystic or any of the other victims of this cataclysmic event. I’m frankly a little shocked that conservatives seem to accept this response with little to no outrage about the statement’s implications. The same way I was shocked in 2016 to find out that so many of the Christians I grew up with were comfortable voting for a thrice divorced, failed business man who openly disavowed all Mexican immigrants and had been credibly accused of sexual assault over 21 times.
I guess I shouldn’t be shocked anymore. Maybe the white conservative Christians are actually going to turn the other cheek this time. Or maybe they’re too busy praying and thinking to call out this administration for using their faith as a tool to dodge accountability.
But regardless of what they’re doing, I’ll be praying, thinking, DONATING and speaking to what could have been done to avoid this.
See how easy it is to do both?
SOURCES ON TEXAS FLOOD
DONATE to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund
https://cftexashillcountry.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4201
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