Hurricane Harvey, we yawn in your direction

Desdemona Despair

By Lindsay Curren
7 September 2017

(A Mind On Our Times) – And Irma, we don’t really give a crap about you, either.

Twenty-seven TRILLION gallons of water dumped on Southeast Texas in six days? That’s what the various reports say.

And we say, “Big whoop!”

Wild-Westy, pavement-obsessedy Houston essentially destroyed, molded, and steeped in a toxic stew from chemical plants gone kablooey while the persistent deluge rose?

We roll our eyes and ask, “Blah, blah, blah — what else you got?”

Thousands of people displaced, their homes, jobs, and daily lives in ruins, their assets lost, and a mountain of recovery left to climb?

And we have to wonder, “Why exactly am I supposed to care?”

In a cruel spin that I in no way actually mean, I jest of course. Yes, I jest in the face of a mammoth American tragedy. Not because I want to, so much, but because I have a thing for wanting to speak the truth. And I guess I’m influenced by wanting to tell it slant.

Because every single one of us knows the truth … EVERY LAST AMERICAN KNOWS that when it comes right down to it, beyond opening our wallets for the obligatory ten buck donations, and the apparent wisdom to not send it to the Red Cross, beyond our sincere prayers and inner empathy, with our eyes glued to videos and photos of the destruction, bearing distant witness, maybe dropping some stuff off at our churches to be shipped down there — clothing, toilet paper, bottled water, toothpaste, snack packs — that we have no intention of changing even one thing about our lives or lifestyle in the face of Harvey’s unmistakable message.

Harvey’s message being, “Global warming is so going to kick your asses.”

We will change nothing.

And frankly, we’re just fine with that.

Just as an exercise, let’s take an inventory to see how well my theory of our profound and even cruel indifference holds up. And brace yourself, because Hurricane Lindsay’s gonna blow, and I will spare no one. [more]

Hurricane Harvey, We Yawn in your Direction