Politicizing Hurricane Harvey Has Begun, But It Should Be Where Politicization Ends

You knew it was going to happen. With American society fully submerged in politically-charged waters, and the media looking for any narrative they can use to stir dissent among the population to instill a sense of dependency on media outlet’s drip of “news” and perspective, a natural calamity is the perfect opportunity to pit factions of people against each other, and ensure attention and money continues to flow into the media-fueled political industrial complex.
A hurricane is a great starting point for political discord. We saw that during Katrina. As President Bush was pounded for a slow response, conservative America used the aftermath as an illustration of the ills plaguing America’s cities and urban dwellers.
But Hurricane Harvey made it harder than expected to sow the political acrimony they so desperately want us believe has gripped society. As the media continues to attempt to drive home the idea that America is a land divided and rife with racial bigotry and intolerance amid a rising tide of tribalism, the depictions from Houston and other places people witnessed was of an incredible outpouring of kindness and neighborly love with little or no regard to race or creed from those involved.
There were white people helping black people, black people helping white people, Latinos and Asians and others all coming to the aid of each other, and each other coming to the aid of them. In the onslaught of calamity, few saw others through the filter of who someone voted for or the color of their skin, and instead identified with another human in need. Looting was limited, the outpouring of help and donations was incredible. Along with the lines of people looking for assistance, you saw lines of people looking to help give it. Screw politics; people were in need, and still are.
But now as the waters have receded in many places, and the refugees have at least found food and shelter, it’s now open season to use Hurricane Harvey to assert why your particular political ideology is superior to someone else’s. This is especially true since Houston is in Texas, and true or not, is seen as a conservative stronghold of closed-minded ideology, that if it didn’t cause the calamity itself, it deserved its wrath a little more than other locales, or at least it should open Houston’s eyes to its wrongful political stances.
Of course all one had to do was witness the images of Harvey to see Houston is a much more diverse place than it’s given credit for. In a May 2017 story in the Los Angeles Times, writer Brittany Meja laid out in great detail how Houston has statistically and culturally become the most diverse place in all of America.
“The story of how his city turned from a town of oil industry roughnecks and white blue-collar workers into a major political centrifuge for immigration reform, demographic analysts say, is nothing less than the story of the American city of the future,” says the LA Times story. “Houston boomed through the mid-20th century, thanks to the oil bonanza, and most of those who came to get rich were white. Large numbers of Vietnamese refugees began arriving in the 1970s, and after an oil collapse in 1982, they were followed by an influx of Latinos driven by cheap housing and employment opportunities. Whites, meanwhile, started drifting out.”
Yet the misnomer that Houston is a white, blue collar, conservative bastion prevails, if it’s not stronger than ever, and inferring political opinion-making like never before.
“The multi-ethnic boom has occurred deep in the heart of a state that has often seemed to regard conservatism, and Texas identity, as an element of religion,” says the LA Times. “Yet demographic experts say the Houston metro area … is a roadmap to what U.S. cities will look like in the coming decades as whites learn to live as minorities in the American heartland.”
This is to say nothing of the fact that Houston’s mayor from 2010 to 2015—Annise Parker—was one of the first openly gay mayors of a major American city, and made Houston the most populous city in America to elect an openly gay mayor. The current mayor of Houston—Sylvester Turner—also happens to be African American. Houston is not the closed-minded society responsible for its own perils because it turns a blind eye to social causes, urban planning, or the calamitous issues of global warming some elements of the media want you to believe, it is literally one of the most liberal cities in the entire Western Hemisphere.
But that hasn’t stopped the misnomers and stigmas of Houston as a conservative mecca to be used a think-piece starters by political opportunists in the media and elsewhere. The legendary, and often controversial French comic Charlie Hebdo’s most recent issue depicts Hurricane Harvey’s survivors as Nazis—fueled by the idea that Nazi-istic behavior is on the rise in America, and a city like Houston would certainly be a bastion of such hatred and subversive activity as a major population base in Texas.
Some have blamed Houston for its lack of zoning laws and rabid growth for the floods. This certainly was a factor in how the metropolitan area was able to deal with the incredible onslaught of water, even though zoning and urban renewal is very much a part of Houston’s currently urban legacy to a greater degree than it is getting credit for. The idea of a zoning-less sprawl is an outdated notion of Houston, while many of its suburbs have always adhered to strict zoning laws and insisted on flood control measures from developers.
But this is another instance where Harvey let the pundits down. By dropping an astronomical 50+ inches of rain on the city, no zoning situation or exquisitely-planned urban blueprint could have saved many of the neighborhoods from the calamity. It was just too much rain in an area where much of the rest of Texas that was inundated with water drains through. At the risk of sounding cliché, it was a perfect storm.
But of course you can also blame this on Houston as well for turning a blind eye on the issues of global warming, not just as a conservative bastion (which it isn’t), but has the home of big petroleum (which it is). However even though doomsayers have been predicting catastrophic hurricanes will be a direct result of warming atmospheric conditions, much of this science is based around the warming of currents in the mid Atlantic, and the depleting sheet ice in areas around Greenland that are altering Atlantic Ocean currents. However Harvey once again offered its own retort by forming almost overnight in the historically-warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico near the Yucatan, where the science of global warming and hurricane formation is more unstudied and up for debate.
Besides, try telling someone on the Texas coast that hurricanes are the cause of George Bush, Donald Trump, Houston, or the city’s petroleum infrastructure. In 1900, before any of these factors were at play, the island of Galveston was hit by the deadliest natural disaster in American history. The Hurricane of 1900 killed an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 people, and demolished the Texas coast.
Is global warming making hurricanes and other weather more severe? According to the experts, it most certainly is. Did policies of the City of Houston or the actions of some of its residents potentially make the disaster of Hurricane Harvey worse? There is a good chance they did, and we should learn from those mistakes. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only factor, and you can blame a population of mostly poor minority immigrants in Houston for the calamity that befell them via Hurricane Harvey.
Of course politicizing Harvey—and with misconstrued facts—is far from a one-sided affair. All one has to do is pour over the reams of collected tweets and social media posts from individuals blaming the post-Katrina problems on President Obama, when in fact he wasn’t even in office at the time. Certainly there are other examples of individuals using Harvey or some effect of the storm to push why a more conservative ideology is superior to progressive values.
But the point is that Harvey didn’t expose America’s political divide, it exposed that whatever divide exists is not nearly as cavernous, unnavigable, or irreconcilable as the people who benefit from endless political war would have you believe. Of course we disagree. Of course there is strife that sometimes spills out into embarrassing and unfortunate disharmony, and even property damage and death. These instances shouldn’t be brushed under the rug, but they also shouldn’t allow us to be misled that the common purpose and general decency that still prevails among wide swaths of American society is somehow dead. In a strange juxtaposition, America is better than many of its leaders and representatives, reaching hands out to those in need and pulling them closer, quite literally. Sometimes you just need a crisis to see that.
People are dead and missing in the Harvey aftermath. Hundreds of thousands of homes and business are destroyed. Countless lives have been uprooted. But none of this needs to have happened for nothing, and it shouldn’t be used to help validate anyone’s polarizing and spurious political grandstanding. In the receding clouds of Harvey’s wake, there is a silver lining that we have learned something from, which is we don’t all hate each other as much as media and politics would lead us to believe. Not even in Texas.
September 1, 2017 @ 6:54 pm
Your sentence about America being better than its political leaders is spot on. Thankfully us common folk have great country music to drown out politics with!
September 1, 2017 @ 7:48 pm
I agree with Oregon Outlaw about how that sentence is spot on. As someone in Houston, I do not see a lot of politicalization of Harvey, mainly because everyone is still recovering and everyone is still helping out. Houston has a strange way of uniting when there is a media fueled message of racial separation through terrible events. When Black Lives Matter marches were beginning to become a popular thing, there was a cop here that was executed at a gas pump and there was a widespread support (for a while) of the boys in blue, and now with all of what is going on everywhere else, Harvey has seemingly united us as a city. It is actually kind of beautiful to watch everyone is taking care of each other. Houston could easily be a symbol for how unified we are as a population or of how unified we can be, but like you have pretty much said, people on both sides probably will not let that happen.
September 1, 2017 @ 8:21 pm
Could be the best damn thing you’ve ever written, Trig.
Well done, sir.
September 2, 2017 @ 4:16 am
I totally agree sbach66…. Yes, well done Trig.
September 1, 2017 @ 8:40 pm
But has anyone checked on all of George Strait’s exes!? Allison down in Galveston?!
September 2, 2017 @ 6:33 am
I here she lost her sanity.
September 2, 2017 @ 6:35 am
*hear
September 1, 2017 @ 9:23 pm
If I’ve learned one thing throughout this process, it’s that Donald Trump could find the cure for cancer, yet the American left will still “resist” everything he does, regardless if it’s good or bad. I realize I’m doing some politicization of this event of my own, but I’ve seriously never seen a president made out to be a villain by the media the way Trump is, and I’m saying that as someone who grew up during the Dubya years.
September 2, 2017 @ 4:35 am
Obama was made out the same way by many on the right and alt-right. This isn’t a feature only reserved to Republican Presidents. Lets not forget the racist dog whistles that many right-wing pundits blew when Obama came to office (rumors about reparations, his religion, etc,). Trump might be treated more unfairly by the “mainstream media” than his predecessors, but I would argue that due to the rise of the internet outlets like The Blaze, Breitbart, and the Drudge Report are just as mainstream now as the Young Turks are on the left and CNN/Fox News still are.
September 4, 2017 @ 8:57 pm
I don’t think you know what that word ‘dog whistle’ means. But, it does fit your DNC narrative that Republicans are racist.
September 4, 2017 @ 7:30 am
In the same vein Right wingers were propping up Trump as a hero for going to Texas and claiming that Obama stayed home and golfed during Katrina. It went viral of course but Obama wouldn’t be president for another 3 years.
Politicizing natural disasters is a fools game.
September 2, 2017 @ 12:35 am
I agree, fwiw. I’ve been in Austin during the storm and just so proud of the way Texas has pulled together. The Newshour on PBS did a good job of pointing out how amazing it was that such a diverse city as Houston really rose to the occasion and helped each other in a beautiful way.
I actually had to yell at some of my friends who spent hours making fun of Melania’s heels. There’s too much work to be done for that nonsense.
September 2, 2017 @ 4:45 am
I’m curious about what this means for Texas as a whole going forward. For the longest time there has been a vein running through Texas of “we should secede” and how Texas would be better off not having to help cover the costs for states like Mississippi or Arkansas that are perpetual economic knuckle draggers. Now with Abbot and even Ted Cruz essentially admitting they need massive Federal help if they are ever going to rebuild Houston, will that die down? Something tells me no, but it will be interesting to see regardless.
September 2, 2017 @ 7:46 am
The amount people truly clamoring for Texas to secede is just about as big as the Nazi population of Texas, which means virtually non-existent, and amplified by media looking for fringe elements to present as mainstream so everyone thinks we’re on the brink of Civil War. As a Texan, I can tell you that secession talk is more of a lark than an actual political movement.
September 3, 2017 @ 7:12 am
I just want to point out that this hurricane did not form in the gulf and the amount of neo-nazis in the south east Texas area, including Houston, is staggering.
September 2, 2017 @ 11:38 am
Prior to hurricane Harvey Texas received about 1.50 in fed aid for every fed tax dollar it sent. Secession would have always been a poor choice (honestly it would be for any state & that includes California, which has a better economy).
September 5, 2017 @ 6:46 am
I did not know the hurricane was named “Harvey Texas.”
September 2, 2017 @ 5:13 am
I could point out the factual errors in this (seriously the Gulf of Mexico is part of the Atlantic Ocean system), & how you’re basically implying that any facts or analysis you dislike is now “politics” & therefore gets to be slammed & ignored, but I’ll settle for:
What the ever loving eff does this have to do with country music?
September 2, 2017 @ 5:38 am
How about you settle for this fact: it’s Trigger’s website, and he can write about whatever the hell he wants.
September 2, 2017 @ 6:46 am
Jesus Seak! I know you’ve told us how highly educated you and all your friends are but you’ve misread or misinterpreted above if you think this is full of errors. You’re comment on the Gulf proves that. He specifically mentioned the mid Atlantic. I don’t see where he says the Gulf isn’t connected to the Atlantic Ocean. I didn’t interpret what you said he’s implying. I’m sure certain folks with poor comprehension skills will though.
September 2, 2017 @ 7:34 am
(Seriously? That’s not like how any of this works a) it’s impossible to say any one event was caused by climate change b) that’s ignoring like 800 other things that all have said an increase in extreme weather events in the entirety of the Atlantic c) that’s ignoring how this storm developed and d) all of this is actually science & should have little to do with politics)
September 2, 2017 @ 7:36 am
I agree with all of that although I it’s unfortunate that politics has to play a role in science.
September 2, 2017 @ 7:37 am
(& e) bc I gave up on reading it due to the ridiculousness of what was being labeled as politics. And holy crap, but for the number of times this blog has published pieces imploring everyone to not talk about politics, jeez just stick to country music.
September 2, 2017 @ 7:53 am
1) As I said in the article, I believe the lack of zoning laws and other urban planning issues of Houston probably did contribute somewhat to the flooding, and these would be political issues. However even if Houston was a master planned shining city on a hill, there still would have been massive flooding due to the rain it received. Also, I don’t think anyone can say that Global Warming (no matter how it is caused) had some contributing factor to the storm. However I don’t think any of us can name just how much of a factor it was due to the chaotic nature of weather. Did it play 1 10% role? a 90% role? We just don’t have enough of a grip on the situation to make that call.
2) Since every sector of American society has now been politicized, it is impossible to do anything without being “political.” I have been on the record for years saying that politics should be compartmentalized in culture, razzing on pop country people for their exploitative flag waving anthems that are nothing more than opportunist marketing. It’s no different now, it’s just the people and parameters have changed.
September 2, 2017 @ 11:26 am
Literally you’re complaining about people who are trying to evaluate things so that we better understand it for the future. You can argue *politics* if you want to point out the politics in everything, but this is politics working as it should & critical thinking.
If you want to complain about politics & hurricane Harvey the fight over the special session is probably a better place. Or the irony of Sen Cruz asking for funds for Texans after his Sandy vote (now politics as petty BS would be pple voting against the funds to stick to to Cruz).
September 3, 2017 @ 9:25 am
Don’t add pork to bills like this
September 4, 2017 @ 9:03 pm
You depend on a UN sanctioned body to push your agenda, and then claim that the other side is politicizing the subject. Blame the lack of hurricanes on AGW, then blame one like Harvey that causes devastation on AGW, also. Only sheep would follow this scam to socialize the world economy and bring down the US and other developed countries. It doesn’t pass the smell test.
September 2, 2017 @ 9:18 pm
I like how this post, and the comment section, up to now, have been about not being divisive, and you, in your characteristic way, have come along and divided it. I respect your right to the often differing opinions you post on here, but there is a difference in truly disagreeing and this, which seems written here for the sole purpose of being divisive and politicizing an article that was calling us to the exact opposite. Lastly, although this has nothing to do with country music, Trigger is a native Texan, I imagine this is close to his heart, and perhaps most importantly, his Web site, he can write about whatever the fuck he wants. If you have a problem with an article seeking to spread unity and paint America as a society proving itself better than its leaders, uniting together under one common goal and working to help each other, well that’s your own problem, I guess, but just as it’s his right to write whatever he wants, you also didn’t have to read it.
September 3, 2017 @ 6:20 am
Seak can’t help herself but to respond to every little things she feels like she’s got the moral high ground on, she’s like a robot. A smug, humorless, elitist robot.
September 2, 2017 @ 6:53 am
How high’s the water mama?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14zHgCrywjU
September 2, 2017 @ 7:19 am
I like the first couple of songs, but the back half is filled with edm, hand claps and bro country filler.
September 2, 2017 @ 10:32 am
I know, right? how long have we been waiting for new stuff and this is the garbage we get? I thought about going to the release show but now i don’t think i could stomach listening to that shit all night
September 2, 2017 @ 8:35 am
Trigger is in Texas. I would be surprised if there weren’t a post about the storm. If you have time to complain about this article, then you have time to actually help the people who need it right now. Donate to Houston Food Bank, the Red Cross, etc or donate some clothes. People still need help down here.
September 2, 2017 @ 10:20 am
To tie this to both Texas and country music:
Miranda Lambert recently put her tour on hold to come back home and help use her dog rescue organization to help find animals who have been separated from their owners during the hurricane. She’s awesome.
September 4, 2017 @ 7:45 am
Okay that’s not true though. She was done with her short European tour and came back to the US as it was unfolding. She didn’t reunite owners with their dogs, Muttnation got volunteers to ship dogs from the shelters to a larger facility out of state. Miranda didn’t actually do anything but show up. Volunteers paid out of their own pockets and even had to come with the supplies leaving people angry and then the business with falsified heals documents…
I’m Texan and our local rescues have been ferrying down food and supplies and bringing animals back since day 1. The volunteers who spend their own money are the real heroes.
September 4, 2017 @ 3:43 pm
You need to fact check- that is false. Some man in Oklahoma mouthed off w/o facts. Miranda was asked by the Humane Society to move animals already in the shelters to other shelters to free up local pets. Shelters needed space to house these animals that were separated from their families. All animals had papers, shots, etc. Mutt Nation is now helping OK shelter move the shelter animals to other shelters around the US. I’m a Houstonian & we were happy to free up space. Local animals are coming in 60/hour a few days. Once again people criticize people for helping.
September 4, 2017 @ 4:01 pm
You need to calm down and read a little better because you’re basically repeating what I said about cleaning out the shelters. The man in Oklahoma is the ACTUAL man who moved the animals and documented everything with photos.
I know exactly how many animals are coming in. Rescues in Texas from all over Texas are reporting on the animals they’re moving. Miranda isn’t doing the moving. Volunteers are.
September 2, 2017 @ 11:32 am
“Of course politicizing Harvey—and with misconstrued facts—is far from a one-sided affair. All one has to do is pour over the reams of collected tweets and social media posts from individuals blaming the post-Katrina problems on President Obama, when in fact he wasn’t even in office at the time. Certainly there are other examples of individuals using Harvey or some effect of the storm to push why a more conservative ideology is superior to progressive values.”
The religious right has tried to do just that with every major natural disaster in the world since Katrina – Superstorm Sandy, the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami, etc., calling them all God’s retribution for tolerance of gay marriage, abortion, etc. It’s repugnant, from the right and the left equally, and needs to stop.
This excellent post also reminded me of this quote about the Civil War from Mary Livermore, a Chicago preacher’s wife who helped supply Union troops with food during the war, which could also apply to the aftermath of any natural disaster such as this: “If it developed some of the most brutal, bestial, and devilish qualities lurking in the human race, it has also shown us how much of the angel there is in the best men and women.”
September 4, 2017 @ 7:22 pm
That’s not true…God promised to never destroy the world by flood…and if he did, he would start in San Francisco.
September 2, 2017 @ 1:23 pm
I can’t imagine that amount of rain and what it would do. I live in buffalo and we have had a very wet year so far. It wasn’t even that total for the whole year. My friend is trying to cut paths to get to hunting stands and luckily had a 4×4 tractor and just barely made it. Has walked to the stand in sneakers a few years ago in the same field.
I went and helped for a few days after the Nashville flood and that was about a third of what some areas received. I saw the devastation and mud stains on the leaves 20′ up in the trees.
I thought I would see more tweets complaining about trump. Just caught one major one saying his million donation wasn’t enough.
I really like how jj watt and the people have rallied to raise a bunch of money. He’s done great! Is there an estimate on the damage or a conjecture on what it’s going to take? I remember how much Nashville was.
September 2, 2017 @ 1:38 pm
My mistake- I thought this was a music blog.
(Yes, I have time to donate to flood relief, and have already done so. I also have time to work with a local animal shelter working to place several dozen homeless dogs and cats from the Houston area. What I don’t have time for is reading baseless attacks on the media simply for doing their job.
Politics is the science of government; it is difficult to cover a catastrophic flood without reporting on how well or poorly government officials and agencies are doing in (1) providing short and long-term assistance to individual flood victims, (2) restoring services and repairing damage caused by the flooding, and (3) preparing to prevent future problems that might result from the flooding of power plants and chemical company factories and warehouse.)
September 2, 2017 @ 10:24 pm
I have absolutely no problem with covering Hurricane Harvey and asking how the relief effort can be most efficiently implemented, or looking back to ask what mistakes were made and how they could be resolved for the future. It is imperative for the media to do so. The issue being taken here is how Houston is being portrayed as a conservative city that deserves or even caused its own fate due to poor planning, creating pollution that created global warming that aided the formation of Harvey, and being generally filled with dumb white blue-collar rednecks who don’t know what the hell they are doing. Go look at the cover of Charlie Hebdo. Read the scores of articles blaming Houston for bringing on the calamity itself. There are people using a natural disaster to attempt to 1 up their political opponents while the people of Houston and Texas are putting their differences aside for the greater good of their community. Of course mistakes were made in Houston. But 51 inches of rain is going to destroy any major city in America. Find what can be done better for the future, but don’t use this disaster as an opportunity.
September 3, 2017 @ 5:37 am
I’m 60 miles east of Houston-we were probably among 5% in my town who didn’t have any damage. For the most part, humanity has definitely superseded divisiveness for the time being. We volunteered alongside families who lost everything but wanted to serve those in even more dire straits.
However, it’s common to hear people who rail against government programs 364 days a year bitch about FEMA not helping them fast enough. We’ve also spent too much time bitching about Melania’s heels.
I hope that we can work together and move forward with more collaboration between the parties to come up with real solutions in future city planning and flood response. If we start from the basic tenet of love thy neighbor I think we can get a lot more done.
On a lighter note, there’s a meme circulating on Facebook with a hummingbird at a feeder with floodwaters in the background. It says that God had to send a hummingbird instead of a dove during this flood because we Texans would have the dove stuffed with jalapeno and cream cheese and slapped on the grill within minutes.
September 3, 2017 @ 7:44 am
Thanks for this thoughtful and excellent post. I agree the media focuses on controversy and divisiveness but I’ve also been seeing a lot of news stories about people coming together to help out, especially how volunteers from Texas and Louisiana have jumped in — literally and in some cases risking their lives — to rescue people and their pets.
September 3, 2017 @ 5:57 pm
Bashing the media is the fashionable thing to do these days, but as I watched this tragedy unfold on various media, I saw people pulling together, strangers helping strangers, folks going all out to lend a hand to others. I even saw members of the media abandon their stations to save people. It’s worth remembering when media gets labeled as “enemies of the people”. Media has issues, especially corporate media, with corruption and chasing ratings. Yet, a free media is essential to democracy. Where would we be without it? Might as well name a Minister of Propaganda and be done with it.
September 3, 2017 @ 7:32 pm
Look, I am a member of the media. I wouldn’t say bashing the media is fashionable, I would say it’s fashionable to bash the media that is on whatever side of the slanted news cycle that is opposite of yours. I’m certainly not against the media, especially independent media. I am against the media polarizing the population by pitting people against each other by politicizing non-political issues, like a major city getting swamped by a historic hurricane.
September 3, 2017 @ 6:41 pm
Just like in the USA, here in Australia we have our share of misfortunes from floods, cyclones (hurricanes), bush fires and so forth. So anyway, I just want to wish all the best to everyone who has suffered damage from Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath. Also giving a shout out to all those performing rescue and/or relief work following the disaster. Thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected at this time.
September 3, 2017 @ 10:01 pm
I applaud you sir. You hit nearly every point with truth. Houston is now nearly solid blue, but the deregulation and lower taxes for refineries created by George W. Bush (when he was govenor) and Rick Perry(which admittedly drove our state’s economy through the recession) allowed a massive center for pollution to be created. But just so you know, none of these plants(save one or two and only by zip code not location) are actually located in Houston. They are in Pasadena, Deer Park, Mt.Belview, Crosby, and Port Arthur).