Perhaps we inhabit a wasteland of anger

I am pro­found­ly sad. Today, I watched the President of the United States—a role that should emanate simul­ta­ne­ous bound­less human­i­ty, good sense, sci­en­tif­ic acu­ity, and restraint—politicize the worst American air dis­as­ter in years. At a moment when com­pas­sion and curios­i­ty should pre­vail on behalf of griev­ing cit­i­zens, there came for­ward only blame and deflec­tion. What has hap­pened to us? Is this a reflec­tion of who we have become?

Sensical social order must pre­vail when peo­ple are vul­ner­a­ble and hurt­ing. Human pain should not be reduced to polit­i­cal points. Suffering is real and deserves col­lec­tive com­pas­sion, whether con­fronting asylees hang­ing atop a bor­der wall, reas­sur­ing fam­i­lies cling­ing to their con­sti­tu­tion­al birthrights, or sup­port­ing the lead­er­ship of high­ly trained res­cue teams pluck­ing bod­ies out of the icy Potomac.

When Hurricane Helene rav­aged North Carolina’s moun­tains, my daugh­ter and her friends hud­dled in the dark­ness, lis­ten­ing as the shriek­ing wind and roil­ing riv­er below her hill­top house trans­formed her town into a sand­lot. At dawn, when they emerged to gasp at unprece­dent­ed destruc­tion, they had one raw response—“What must we do to take care of one another?”

Half the town, includ­ing roads, parks, gas sta­tions, gro­cery stores, water and waste treat­ment facil­i­ties, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and elec­tri­cal grids, were washed away. They pooled food and water resources. They res­cued neigh­bors. They com­mu­ni­cat­ed by leav­ing notes on each other’s doors and sur­vived until first respon­ders dropped from the sky or bull­dozed into town. A com­bi­na­tion of indi­vid­ual deter­mi­na­tion, com­mu­ni­ty pluck, and even­tu­al gov­ern­ment resources—devoid of finger-pointing—began the long, com­plex assign­ment of restor­ing their com­mu­ni­ty, an effort that con­tin­ues today.

A com­bi­na­tion of pub­lic will, pri­vate part­ner­ships, and gov­ern­ment resources save reg­u­lar peo­ple when tragedy strikes. Regardless of polit­i­cal yelps from either side of the aisle or media blovi­at­ing, career gov­ern­men­tal offi­cials who are good at their jobs usu­al­ly know what to do. I’ve wit­nessed such sal­va­tion first-hand dur­ing droughts, for­est fires, floods, and tor­na­does. What I have nev­er wit­nessed until now are attempts to betray pub­lic trust in gov­ern­ment func­tions by the very peo­ple we elect to safe­guard them. 

We are enter­ing an era of pro­posed unrav­el­ing of such pro­tec­tive struc­tures. For exam­ple, the new admin­is­tra­tion has posit­ed dis­band­ing the Federal Emergency Management Agency and pitch­ing dis­as­ter relief to indi­vid­ual states. The math propo­si­tion alone for that idea is ludi­crous. The cost of Hurricane Helene’s assault on North Carolina exceeds $60 bil­lion. The state’s entire annu­al bud­get is half that. 

Here in Kentucky, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed 91 per­cent of the funds required to rebuild homes dam­aged by the 2022 flood. Coming back from that dis­as­ter required a com­plex inter­weav­ing of fed­er­al, state, and local agen­cies and busi­ness­es to help peo­ple recov­er. Of course, the response was not per­fect, but I believe most peo­ple approach such chal­lenges by ask­ing that famil­iar ques­tion, “What must we do to take care of one another?” 

Over the gen­er­a­tions, regard­less of pol­i­tics, we have built struc­tures to sup­port pro­duc­tive answers to that question.

We live in com­plex times. We are assault­ed and insult­ed by a con­stant bar­rage of con­fus­ing infor­ma­tion from all sides. What makes me sad is the amount of hate and blame in our social ecosys­tem, some­times ampli­fied by lead­ers we elect­ed to be our bet­ter angels.

Perhaps we are des­tined to live in a new waste­land of anger, besieged by pols who trans­form human needs into zero-sum games of spite. I don’t know about you, but peo­ple I know, love, and respect don’t hate, they lead with love. In my expe­ri­ence, insti­tu­tions built on that promise usu­al­ly fare bet­ter than the ugly alternative.