Floods of bad news point to the dark truth of Trump's America

Twenty-seven dead. Twenty-seven young women and staff from the Camp Mystic near Kerrville, Texas. Apparently, many were still asleep or just waking when the early morning flood cut loose. It was as if a bomb went off.

They slept as danger and death were imminent. This lesson speaks volumes, and not just of water. These days, bombs go off daily while we ignore the danger. They detonate in Congress, the courts, our statehouses, the White House. But we sleep on.

Sometimes, we sense subtle nudges of the danger. Our hometown of Salina lost no lives directly, but Salina’s Smoky Hill flood logjam has become a major fascination — and budget headache. A forest of logs and wood debris help flood local ballfields, now rendered momentarily unusable.

Such unexpected high waters offer us a mirror. Camp Mystic, however, is starker than any mirror.

Described as a “safe haven” and a place for spiritual solace, Camp Mystic was known for its beauty — and hosting the children of Laura Bush and granddaughters of LBJ. Lady Bird Johnson sometimes came to camp closings.

How could they not have been warned?

A well-functioning National Weather Service might have helped. But Trump had already canned 600 workers. Oblivious, he merely blamed nature.

“This is a hundred-year catastrophe,” he said. “So horrible to watch.”

This was no 100-year event. Climate chaos chickens have come home to roost. Our leaders’ response, stunningly, has only been to cut and gut.

Except for the bombs.

In Gaza, more than 59,000 Palestinians are dead, more than half of them women and children. Though the latest Texas flood numbers are shocking and sad (136 lives lost), they’re overwhelmed by the tsunami of Palestine.

Instead of ending the slaughter, U.S. leaders sent untold billions of our tax dollars to Israel for death and destruction, in short, for genocide. Hospitals, schools and residences destroyed; survivors starved; many more killed in food distribution deathtraps.

Whether these bombs are climate-related or human-engineered, their common origin is a refusal to face reality. Many U.S. citizens falsely assume “we” are protected. Those who don’t are labeled leftist radicals, woke or worse.

Otherwise good people hold such beliefs. A personal story may illustrate. On the day U.S. Sens. Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall voted to cut and gut the already appropriated $1.1 billion for NPR and PBS, I expressed my anger at the betrayal to some local coffee group friends. “Now, we have to be responsible for our representatives’ irresponsibility,” I said.

“I’m glad it was gutted,” said one older gentleman. “They’re just communist propagandists, anyway.”

I told him that wasn’t true.

He said, “Well, you’ve clearly been listening to AOC.”

I didn’t argue further. My time is valuable. And yet, how have we come to this?

A recent Nation magazine article labels us the “Dis-United States.” Kevin Willmott, well-known Kansas filmmaker and writer, reported that his 20-year-old film, Confederate States of America, envisioned what would have happened had the slave states won the Civil War. They didn’t, but in today’s United States, Willmott writes, “the Confederacy has gobbled up the Union.”

“The Trump administration’s ongoing attack on the federal bureaucracy and wholesale cancellation of government programs; the quest to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion policies; the erasure of Black history; and the reinstatement of Confederate names on military bases — all are clear attempts to revive the white supremacy of the CSA,” he writes.

“So is the clearly unconstitutional attempt to revoke birthright citizenship, as enshrined in the 14th Amendment, drawn up and ratified by the victors of the Civil War.”

At a Memphis showing of his film, an older white woman receptionist said: “The South will rise again.”

It already has.

In a flood of bad news, the only explanation for the public’s trance is the hero worship found in professional wrestling. We need not delineate all Trump’s connections to that world. But Greg Olear lays it out:

“Flabby Donald (assumes) the physique of Hulk Hogan, Rocky Balboa, and Rambo. … The guns, the fist pump. “Fight, fight, fight.”

He adds: “This is Geopolitical WrestleMania. … We should know by now what’s real and what’s fake, but fantasy and reality have blurred together, … the special effects are too good, and it’s fun — FUN! — to have heroes and heels, decisive winners and irredeemable losers.”

We have been sold down the river. Trump’s Billionaire Buyout Bill leaves miles of destruction in its wake.

If you want to avoid the flood, stay alert and get to higher ground. This is your siren call.