Trump clueless on self-help ethos that makes our state great
Areporter once asked Willie Nelson what it means to be an American, and Willie said, “America, to me, is freedom. I’m from Texas, and one of the reasons I like Texas is because there’s no one in control.”
In his half-joking way, Willie captured something quintessential about Texas: We sort of just do things on our own, without asking permission. Sometimes that makes it seem like no one’s in control, but the flip side is that Texans tend to pitchin during a crisis — like they did when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston last August and everyone within 150 miles who owned a boat showed up to help rescue those stranded by floodwaters.
With emergency services swamped, ordinary people stepped up, some them coming from as far away as San Antonio with nothing but a canoe strapped to a trailer. They rescued thousands of people, and the effort came to define Hurricane Harvey. It marked a moment of greatness for Texas.
So on Wednesday, when President Trump suggested that the high number of water rescues during Harvey was due to people taking their boats out to watch the storm roll in, Texans were by turns baffled and offended.
“Sixteen thousand people, many of them in Texas, for whatever reason that is. People went out in their boats to watch the hurricane,” Trump said. “That didn’t work out too well.”
Trump’s remarks came during a call with state and federal leaders in preparation for the upcoming hurricane season. A pair of reporters for The Houston Chronicle, Andrea Zelinski and St. John Barned-Smith, got reactions from state and local officials, none of whom knew what the president was talking about.
“I don’t know how we would go about confirming that,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer Edward Wargo. Francisco Sanchez, spokesman for Harris County’s Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management, said, “I’m not aware of anybody in Harris County on a boat in the midst of the storm and its aftermath as a matter of leisure or entertainment.”
Of the more than 10,000 people rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard during Harvey, there were a few isolated incidents in which people were rescued from vessels under duress in the Gulf, including a 160-foot commercial vessel that was taking on water near Port Mansfield the day before the storm made landfall.
The most charitable interpretation of Trump’s comment is that he was referring to those isolated incidents, however bizarre it might be in the broader context of the volunteer rescue effort.
A more likely explanation is that the comment reflects Trump’s knee-jerk affinity for government agencies charged with law enforcement, rescue and first response, and border security. The president’s fondness for the U.S. Border Patrol is famous, as is his preference for a “tough-on-crime” approach to policing.
As important as such government agencies are, they are limited, especially when large-scale disaster strikes. That’s when the do-it-yourself ethos of Texas shines brightest, as it did during Harvey.
Something similar happened after the 2013 fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, which killed 15 people, 12 of them first responders. In the days that followed the April 17 blast, the town of West was awash in volunteers. Churches provided shelter and counseling while neighbors helped clear debris. So much donated food and clothing poured into the town that the Red Cross was overwhelmed and asked people to stop donating.
In the weeks that followed, while local residents waited for recovery funds from federal and state agencies, a local Baptist church used donated construction equipment and volunteer labor to knock down houses damaged beyond repair by the blast.
It was a quintessentially Texan response, just like the response to Hurricane Harvey. Residents of West and Houston didn’t wait for government, but acted on their own initiative. In that sense, they exemplified the American ideal of rugged individualism combined with a strong sense of civic duty.
Texas is really just an exaggerated version of America, which is why we come out uninvited, boats and backhoes blazing, when disaster strikes. If Trump wants to make America great again, he should consider what makes Texas great, and think twice before disparaging the heroes of Hurricane Harvey.
Davidson, a resident of Austin, is a senior correspondent for The Federalist.