On August 25, 2017, about a week and a half ago from when I write this, a terrible natural disaster hit our planet in the form a monster hurricane that we named Hurricane Harvey.
Though Hurricane Harvey was born days earlier as a tropical storm that had been sweeping its way northward through the smaller seas of the Atlantic Ocean, it swelled into the destructive behemoth it was to become only after it hit land on the the eastern coast of Texas, a state on the southwestern coast of the country where I live, a country known at this time as the United States of America.
Unlike typical hurricanes that ferociously blow their way across land areas, weakening in energy and force as they travel until they finally dissipate into the atmosphere, Harvey rather blustered along the eastern Texas seaboard until it arrived above the city of Houston where it stalled and sluggishly churned for several days, in a short time dumping almost 50 inches of rain over the city.
Houston, a city of almost 2 1/2 million people but with over 5 1/2/ million living in its metropolitan area, is at this time the 4th largest city in the United States.
The devastation inflicted upon Houston and its environs,
Five years earlier a devastating hurricane called Hurricane Sandy had hit the coastline of the state of New Jersey, and at that time,
...a self-important senator from Texas named Ted Cruz voted to deny government aid to the people of New Jersey whose lives had been devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Now it is he who must turn his fellow senators, including those from New Jersey whose pleas he denied, for aid for the people of his state. |
Donald Trump has promised to build a massive, 2,000-mile, 15 billion dollar wall between the United States and Mexico.
And yet in response to Hurricane Harvey's devastation the Mexican government has been sending food, boats, vehicles and other aid to help the people of Texas, and has offered continued aid, which the Governor of Texas has gratefully accepted.
No thank you from Donald Trump has yet been extended to Mexico.
Other ironies will play out as this cataclysmic event goes down in history, among them one irony having to do with Texans' historical hostility towards the Federal government whose aid they now desperately need , another rising from former animosity towards undocumented immigrants, every one of whom will now be needed to help rebuild this devastated state.
It is hypothesized that the destruction wreaked upon one of this country's largest population centers, including the residual damage to infrastructure, diminished production of Texas's oil, which the whole nation depends upon, and the region's need for probably 150 billion dollars in government aid, could change the whole political landscape of the United States.
And even as I write this another new hurricane called Hurricane Irma is threatening another round of devastation, this time to Florida, a state along our country's southeastern seaboard.
Whether these natural disasters our country is now suffering change us for the better, worse, or not at all is something that we here in the United States in 2017 cannot know.
Only you, unknown archivist of the future, do.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/24/us/hurricane-harvey-texas.html?mcubz=1
https://news.vice.com/story/mexico-is-sending-aid-to-texas-even-as-trump-insults-them
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/us/texas-storm-federal-aid-abbott-cruz.html?mcubz=1&_r=0