The unprecedented rains of Hurricane Harvey have brought death and destruction to Houston, Texas. Thousands of people are homeless, thousands of others are working around the clock to rescue the victims of the flooding, and the eventual loss of property will be billions of dollars.
Yet there is a silver lining in the storm clouds that ravaged “The Big Heart,” the nickname given Houston after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005 and Houstonians stepped up to help the victims.
The valiant efforts of firemen and policemen, the rescues by thousands of volunteers like those of the “Cajun Navy,” neighbors helping neighbors and strangers helping strangers: this is the America I know and love.
It is not the America where some citizens savage others via the Internet and other devices for their politics or religious beliefs. It is not the America where a handful of people—Neo-Nazis, the masked morons of Antifa, and all the other idiots of whatever political guise—claim to speak truth to the rest of us. It is not the America where many both in and out of government actively work to destroy that government.
No—the America I see in Houston is the America I believe in. It is an America where white, black, and brown people look at a fellow human being in harm’s way and wade to the rescue. It is an America where strangers board the same boat, sometimes literally, and share what they have with their fellow travellers. It is an America where citizens from across this great land begin immediately sending aid to countrymen.
Facing their ordeal, most Houstonians have shown the rest of us what they possess in their hearts and what the rest of us should hope to possess: courage and compassion in the face of adversity.
As for those politicians, reporters, and radicals who seem to delight in tearing our country apart, building walls between people rather than bridges, Houston has put you to shame. Quit trying to rip the country asunder. Take off your masks and go home, quit throwing bricks and bottles at the police, quit telling the rest of us how oppressed you are. You have become a prototype suitable only for parody, a model meant only for mockery.
Houston, thank you.
You have shown us what we are and what we are meant to be.
The valiant efforts of firemen and policemen, the rescues by thousands of volunteers like those of the “Cajun Navy,” neighbors helping neighbors and strangers helping strangers: this is the America I know and love.
It is not the America where some citizens savage others via the Internet and other devices for their politics or religious beliefs. It is not the America where a handful of people—Neo-Nazis, the masked morons of Antifa, and all the other idiots of whatever political guise—claim to speak truth to the rest of us. It is not the America where many both in and out of government actively work to destroy that government.
No—the America I see in Houston is the America I believe in. It is an America where white, black, and brown people look at a fellow human being in harm’s way and wade to the rescue. It is an America where strangers board the same boat, sometimes literally, and share what they have with their fellow travellers. It is an America where citizens from across this great land begin immediately sending aid to countrymen.
Facing their ordeal, most Houstonians have shown the rest of us what they possess in their hearts and what the rest of us should hope to possess: courage and compassion in the face of adversity.
As for those politicians, reporters, and radicals who seem to delight in tearing our country apart, building walls between people rather than bridges, Houston has put you to shame. Quit trying to rip the country asunder. Take off your masks and go home, quit throwing bricks and bottles at the police, quit telling the rest of us how oppressed you are. You have become a prototype suitable only for parody, a model meant only for mockery.
Houston, thank you.
You have shown us what we are and what we are meant to be.
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