Texas

[BoSoxGal]

I was just reading an article about a young woman in her early 20s who was plucked from a tree she grabbed onto 15 miles from where she was swept away by the Guadalupe River from her family's riverside camp site on July 4th. Her parents, sister, aunt and uncle are all dead or presumed dead - a couple of them are not yet recovered.

Another uncle of hers quoted the Bible in discussing the floods and her plight:

Isaiah 43:2 "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you."


That sneaky Bible has a way of telling you to not believe the experience of your body and the evidence you see with your own eyes, about the very thing that has just happened to you - but instead to believe that God would not let what just happened to you ever happen to you, if you just have faith.

And people eat it up.


But then I've been thinking, if you live in Texas it probably helps a very great deal to have a kind of blind faith in a spiritual entity who is watching out for your life and your wellbeing, because the government you pay taxes to fund sure isn't.

They have a RAINY DAY (the irony!) fund of something like high 20s low 30s BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. Yet the state would not invest a paltry $1 million to fund an emergency siren system in Kerr County, a known flash flood zone where dozens have died in the past???

What is the value of a life in Texas?

They seem to have no shortage of passion for saving the lives of fetuses in the womb, yet look to Uvalde and Kerr County and the utter disregard for born life - a disregard that is reflected in policy choices and legislation affecting Texas citizens in education, healthcare, disability rights, workers rights, etc.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I realize that it's not really the point of your post - which I endorse - but tangentially I think misunderstanding Biblical stuff is a problem for many (most?) Christians of the Evangelical persuasion. That Isaiah quote for example. Indisputably, God is speaking not of saving individual people but is addressing the nation of Israel that is about to return from exile in Babylon etc. to Jerusalem. God's promise is not that individual people of that nation will get there safely - he will bring the nation home. Tough noogies for some, overall joy for the tribes.

But today in the USA in particular, lines like that, ripped from all context are often used to state that individuals will not suffer, despite (as you say) all the evidence. I think in this case though, the man who quoted the passage is probably taking it in the wider context. The families of those who have lost loved ones (and property, secondarily), despite the awful loss will go on.

This on the political side . . .

They seem to have no shortage of passion for saving the lives of fetuses in the womb, yet look to Uvalde and Kerr County and the utter disregard for born life - a disregard that is reflected in policy choices and legislation affecting Texas citizens in education, healthcare, disability rights, workers rights, etc.

. . . sadly is the case

[Big RR]

[BoSoxGal]

And THIS fucking asshole - I would SO like to punch him in his stupid, stupid face.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Quite apart from the sorry performance on the day - lack of warning etc - the Guadalupe River is a known flash flood hazard - 13 people killed in 1987 which is not beyond living memory - who on earth ever proposed building more camp sites and who the fuck approved it???? Just look at the terrain and it's an obvious flood plain. Astonishing. Yes, Trump and Doge forced major reductions at NWS and I'm not discounting that but really???