It’s not exactly like I have a problem with everybody gathering around the latest national emo-fire to express their upset over what happened to all those people in Central Texas on Friday. But the thing is bad things happen in the USA to kids every single day. And nobody gives a damn at all.
But these were privileged white girls, at a legendary summer camp. Nothing bad was ever supposed to happen to them. They were rich, white Texans. So, you know?
Well, nature doesn’t know. She doesn’t give a damn about anybody’s privilege. She’ll drown rich people and poor people alike. All you have to do is make the wrong choice. And there are lots of ways to do that when you’re talking about the creeks and rivers of Central Texas.
Most days, being a fool with Nature isn’t gonna do you much harm.
Then comes a day.
So, now The New York Times is picking on the folks in Kerr County. Because they went cheap and 19th-century and did not take care of the privileged white girls. Or any of the other people camped on the Guadalupe on Friday. But at some point you do have to ask what responsibility people have to monitor things like risk themselves. Because the risk to the summer camps on that dangerous river was known for a long time.
See, even the wealthy can make dumb choices.
Or more to the point, there comes a day when making dumb choices, which the wealthy do all the time, including professionally to all the rest of us, can even come back to harm them and theirs.
In the 1900 flood one of the first things that happened after the dam broke was the water bashed into the power house, adjacent to the dam:
“This current struck the wall of the power house almost on a level with the floor of the pump room (about 12 feet below. the crest of the dam), crushed in all of the windows on the west side, flooded all of the lower stories, and caught and drowned five employees and three small boys.”
See how you don’t care anything about those eight dead people. Especially the three small boys, who I doubt were privileged kids at summer camp. Their deaths are so far away in time it’s like they were on another planet, right? I mean, who are they to you?
Nobody.
I know exactly what you mean though. Because economic privilege or especially the lack of it creates that same kind of distance, huh?
It’s always floodin’ down in Texas somewhere, for somebody, that’s for sure.
And most of us don’t give a damn about it.
But we’ll be sure to post some bullshit about our thoughts and prayers. Because you gotta look good while you’re ignoring the suffering of people whose lives and deaths don’t matter.
I’d rather just drink that tequila straight.
