Performative Libertarianism Is Costing People Their Lives in Texas

Texas Governor Greg (Natural Disaster) Abbott continues to press the outside of the political envelope with his ham-fisted reaction to the devastating floods, the missing and the dead from which is now passed 200. From The New York Times:

“Let me explain one thing about Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbott said last Tuesday when questioned about the failures of state and local officials to provide better flood warnings. He then reached for an analogy from the state’s obsession with football. “Every football team makes mistakes,” he said. “The way winners talk is not to point fingers. They talk about solutions. What Texas is all about is solutions.” Those who did otherwise, he said, were "losers."

Coach Abbott don't want no losers. You play for Coach Abbott, you gotta play with pain. You gotta rub a little dirt on your grief and get ready to run the next play. Your daughter drowned at prayer at a Christian summer camp because there was no flood warning system and because the federal weather services had been cut to the bone by a bunch of cargo-shorts cowboys in Washington, D.C.? Buckle that damn chin strap and get back out there.

“I don’t care if I make a lot of enemies,” said Raymond Howard, a City Council member from flood-ravaged Ingram, Texas, who has been outspoken in his outrage over years of fruitless discussions among officials in Kerr County about a warning system, “because this cannot ever happen again.”

For many others, Mr. Abbott’s football analogy fell flat, even in football-loving Texas. “What our governor did, comparing it to sports, was wrong, very wrong,” said Earl Campbell, a Hall of Fame running back for the Houston Oilers, in a telephone interview. “We’re talking about people that lost their loved ones, and not football or basketball or baseball or whatever ball.” Mr. Campbell, who grew up in the East Texas city of Tyler and has enjoyed hunting in the Hill Country, said the “grown-ups” should have put a warning system in place. “There should have been something going off so the kids could hear it,” he said.

The mythos is part of what makes people move to Texas and want to see themselves as Texan, and part of what has kept the state conservative, even as it has grown more diverse. “Low taxes, low service—that attracts a certain American mind-set,” Mr. Frazier said. Even after the flood, there remained a skepticism of government regulation.

“There will probably be an enlightened awareness of potential dangers now,” said Gordon Ames, 66, a former host of a talk and roots-music radio show in Kerrville. “But I’m not suggesting any new laws or any government intervention. As adults we should be able to figure this out on our own."

The Texas Tribune went back through the transcripts of Kerr County commission meetings and found that the bedrock of local politics continues to be an unshakable faith in performative libertarianism.

All that concern about warning systems seemed to fade over the next five years, as the political atmosphere throughout the county became more polarized and COVID fatigue frayed local residents’ nerves. In 2021, Kerr County was awarded a $10.2 million windfall from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, which Congress passed that same year to support local governments impacted by the pandemic. Cities and counties were given flexibility to use the money on a variety of expenses, including those related to storm-related infrastructure. Corpus Christi, for example, allocated $15 million of its ARPA funding to “rehabilitate and/or replace aging storm water infrastructure.” Waco’s McLennan County spent $868,000 on low water crossings.

Kerr County did not opt for ARPA to fund flood warning systems despite commissioners discussing such projects nearly two dozen times since 2016. In fact, a survey sent to residents about ARPA spending showed that 42% of the 180 responses wanted to reject the $10 million bonus altogether, largely on political grounds.

“I’m here to ask this court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House,” one resident told commissioners in April 2022, fearing strings were attached to the money. “We don't want to be bought by the federal government, thank you very much,” another resident told commissioners. “We'd like the federal government to stay out of Kerr County and their money.”

To expand on Governor Abbott's analogy, the whole state needs to go into the concussion protocol for a while.