Emily, yours is the first post I’ve read that does a good job factually parsing out what happened and what we should consider next to prevent tragedies like this. As a south Texas mom (and life-long Dem) whose daughter attended a summer camp located very near Camp Mystic for two summers, I appreciate your respectful, empathetic report. No one deserves disasters like this.
Central Texan here, who didn’t vote for Abbott nor Trump, just like those girls who were too young to cast any votes! The Diabolical Lies podcast episode “A Tale of Two Algorithms” really highlights how the rage machine works, it’s a great listen (and validated my decision to delete my Meta accounts)
My daughter was in Hunt, TX at a neighboring camp on the 4th, a place near and dear to my heart from my own childhood. Thank you for this reasonable explainer, as always. Two things can be true - we can grieve for the absolute devastation and also ask thoughtful questions and hold systems accountable.
Dems and Republicans alike should want to investigate this tragedy to see how deaths in future events can be mitigated. Because, given climate change, there WILL be other events. But we also need to give this TX community a chance to continue the search for bodies and grieve. I can’t see GOP suddenly recognizing climate change but hopefully feds and states can work together to find and install warning systems that this area of TX didn’t install a few years ago because of high cost. TX legislature this year voted down early warning systems but if there’s any good to come out of this tragedy, maybe they will now fund them. And maybe Congress will agree to put federal $$$ towards systems to help states. That’s what government is meant to do.
It would be interesting to discuss further how much the left attacks itself and nothing is ever done the “right” way/purity tests in a post/comment section unconnected to a horrible tragedy.
I think a problem is that dems spend a lot of time in factional warfare, and I recognize that if I were to post said commentary it would in fact be me participating in the factional warfare I oppose. I do go into dem strategy stuff from time to time, but I try to be mindful of not participating in what I object to.
Reading any posts about this tragedy is hard in all respects. After what happened with NC flooding from Helene, we should realize that disaster can strike anyone at anytime and we are no one is immune. I live in FL and in our 7 years here we’ve had two hurricanes go right over us and we are inland. Our damage was minimal. But did I buy a flood insurance policy this year, sure did. While we can’t stop it, the question is what can we learn and do better next time? I’d rather put our energy there instead of the blame game.
Thank you, I knew you'd inject some reason and empathy into a discourse that has been seemingly spiraling out of control for the last couple of days. Texans are (largely) moving together at the moment, at least on Instagram, to find resources, and the noisy and misinformation laden posting from (mostly) out of state has been frustrating. I will say, though, I've been really proud of Texans generally, and Texas Democrats, which is giving me hope in the midst of so much struggle.
Emily, yours is the first post I’ve read that does a good job factually parsing out what happened and what we should consider next to prevent tragedies like this. As a south Texas mom (and life-long Dem) whose daughter attended a summer camp located very near Camp Mystic for two summers, I appreciate your respectful, empathetic report. No one deserves disasters like this.
Thank you for covering this. I’m very close to this tragedy and we are reeling.
Central Texan here, who didn’t vote for Abbott nor Trump, just like those girls who were too young to cast any votes! The Diabolical Lies podcast episode “A Tale of Two Algorithms” really highlights how the rage machine works, it’s a great listen (and validated my decision to delete my Meta accounts)
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/diabolical-lies/id1761438573?i=1000685506294
My daughter was in Hunt, TX at a neighboring camp on the 4th, a place near and dear to my heart from my own childhood. Thank you for this reasonable explainer, as always. Two things can be true - we can grieve for the absolute devastation and also ask thoughtful questions and hold systems accountable.
Dems and Republicans alike should want to investigate this tragedy to see how deaths in future events can be mitigated. Because, given climate change, there WILL be other events. But we also need to give this TX community a chance to continue the search for bodies and grieve. I can’t see GOP suddenly recognizing climate change but hopefully feds and states can work together to find and install warning systems that this area of TX didn’t install a few years ago because of high cost. TX legislature this year voted down early warning systems but if there’s any good to come out of this tragedy, maybe they will now fund them. And maybe Congress will agree to put federal $$$ towards systems to help states. That’s what government is meant to do.
I wish we didn't need a tragedy to push us toward necessary preventive action, but if that's what comes from it, then at least something good did!
It would be interesting to discuss further how much the left attacks itself and nothing is ever done the “right” way/purity tests in a post/comment section unconnected to a horrible tragedy.
I think a problem is that dems spend a lot of time in factional warfare, and I recognize that if I were to post said commentary it would in fact be me participating in the factional warfare I oppose. I do go into dem strategy stuff from time to time, but I try to be mindful of not participating in what I object to.
(My comment is not a criticism of this post.)
Reading any posts about this tragedy is hard in all respects. After what happened with NC flooding from Helene, we should realize that disaster can strike anyone at anytime and we are no one is immune. I live in FL and in our 7 years here we’ve had two hurricanes go right over us and we are inland. Our damage was minimal. But did I buy a flood insurance policy this year, sure did. While we can’t stop it, the question is what can we learn and do better next time? I’d rather put our energy there instead of the blame game.
Thank you, I knew you'd inject some reason and empathy into a discourse that has been seemingly spiraling out of control for the last couple of days. Texans are (largely) moving together at the moment, at least on Instagram, to find resources, and the noisy and misinformation laden posting from (mostly) out of state has been frustrating. I will say, though, I've been really proud of Texans generally, and Texas Democrats, which is giving me hope in the midst of so much struggle.
Thank you for covering this and parsing out the facts, while remaining empathetic.
As always, thank you for this ❤️
Fair and balanced -- truly.