The scale of devastating loss and damage from the Texas flooding on July 4 is inevitably causing questions to arise—about monitoring, about preparedness and advanced warning or the lack thereof, about the wisdom of carrying on with programming at a summer camp that lies in a flood plain when there was at least some rudimentary knowledge of bad weather and dangerous conditions approaching.

Do we just chalk it up to the pioneering, devil-may-care spirit of Texans who think they walk on water, or the hands-off management style and flaky views of the governor and lieutenant governor, and the general mindset of a state that can’t be told anything because you don’t mess with Texas?

Maybe it was all just a confluence of perfect conditions that led to a disaster that couldn’t be foreseen or imagined. But I doubt that’s going to sit very well with families who have lost loved ones and most every material possession they had.

One might expect people to want better answers than that it was the unfortunate and unpredictable arrival of a one-thousand-year event, and there was nothing anyone could do about that. That’s probably not gonna suffice in this situation.  

How could people be so flippant with their choices? Did they do any homework, any soul searching? What the hell did they think they were going to get with a vote for Donald Trump? Could they possibly have been convinced that he had an ounce of sincerity in him—apart from the sincere vindictiveness that drives him? How easily they were deceived! And now the whole country, maybe even the world, has to pay.

It’s all a tragic travesty, a real piece of shit, because it’s not just Trump we need to worry about. It’s all the others who are propping him up and riding his coattails.

We should all be lamenting the loss of dependable sources of information, of anyone who can give us a straight answer on anything. Besides AI, there are too many wordsmiths who can generate smart-sounding rebuffs and bytes, words that cover asses without really saying anything but are supposed to suffice as expert opinions and rational explanations.

Money is power. Vested interests find a way to get their way and their voices heard, and there is no such thing as common sense. Values are compromised for a song, people are discounted and stepped on. Getting one’s way and maintenance of lifestyle seem to be all that matter.

Then again, I suppose it will always be difficult to accept answers that don’t feed our expectations and assumptions. But anyone worth their salt will be able to sift through the convoluted, contrived responses and recognize the bullshit when they hear it.

I watched a recent TED talk featuring Al Gore talking about his pet topic—the environment—and I was at once impressed by his level of preparedness, with all the charts and graphs and the body of knowledge he has at his disposal, but was also a bit turned off by his loud gravelly voice and breathless, sing-song delivery that had me wishing he would stop and take a breath, change the cadence.

I suppose the passion takes over, facilitates the delivery. The topic stands on its own as timely and relevant and of first order concern, and Gore has been on this mission for a long time now.

What I’m trying to say is people on both sides of the environmental crisis come to the table with their own ammunition, arguments and counter-arguments. I prefer Gore’s take on things. I discount the arguments of the petrol giants as mere self-interest and alarming ignorance. They should know better. They should adapt or die. They have always had the means to see the writing on the wall and retool, and they’ve chosen not to. They could be leaders in a vast new sea of opportunity, and they’ve chosen to drag their feet.

Given the chance, the rest of us will have to show them the way.

A snap of the fingers. That was easy.

What kind of deal did the two fugitives work out? “Drop some bunker busters and I’ll call it even. I’ll agree to a ceasefire and you can get your peace prize.”

I’d be surprised if it didn’t go something like that.