The rampant spreading of memes that point out the hypocrisy of primarily conservative politicians that oppose federal disaster aid for other states while requesting it for their own states have reached an all time high with the recent flooding in Texas.
At this point, it is a tired narrative that doesn't create a new or bring new people into an ongoing discourse. There are far more interesting and important things related to disaster aid that we could discuss. That being said I do like this article. Reich brings up several important points:
1. he points out that hypocrisy without propagandizing it.
2. he connects disaster aid to state governments tremulous relationship with the federal government. i.e. receipt and request of disaster aid is a politicized process.
3. he acknowledges that some states are more susceptible to disasters and require more aid. Need is not distributed evenly.
4. he reiterates that the continued, ignorant debate over the realities of climate change will not prevent the climate from changing and resulting disasters from happening.
5. (there are nice, rational people that live in Texas)
Disasters emphasize existing our social structures... "institutionalized irrationality" being part of that. And that's the real issue, institutionalized irrationality. This particular group of memes that surface after ever disaster in a republican led state fail to make that point and instead offer some vague suggestion that maybe that state shouldn't get aid, not to mention they completely ignore the survivors of that particular event.
