Don’t be fooled by naysayers. America has not lost its way, it values, or its humanity. Sometimes our politics get a little dysfunctional. But the country is bigger than its politics, its media, its identity wars, or its ideological melodramas.
Amid the unfathomable damage and suffering wrought by Hurricane Harvey in southeast Texas, what did we see?
We saw fraternity, compassion, and practical action.
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And we saw these things across the divide that we are sometimes told can never be bridged.
A black police officer waded into the water to save two white children.
White men pulled an elderly black woman to safety aboard their fishing boat.
Everyday citizens with boats ferried trapped residents to safety.
Houston Texans football player J.J. Watt has started a YouCaring fund-raiser and pledged $100,000. By Monday afternoon, close to $400,000 had been donated.
Country singer Chris Young donated $100,000 into a GoFundMe effort that was at $150,000 by Monday afternoon.
And the media? A CNN crew rescued an elderly man and his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife from their flooded home. And the Weather Channel’s Paul Goodloe interrupted his update to fold an American flag he found on a nearby collapsed home — not exactly enemies of the people.
We saw one people. Of course we did. We saw Texans helping Texans through a devastating natural disaster.
A Texas district court judge, R.K. Sandill, tweeted a photo of three Hispanic officers pushing a wheelchair-bound white woman through the water. His comment: “I love Houston. This diverse city comes together to take care of its own.”
But the support is not just coming from Houston. Cities from across the country are sending help. A task force of 49 firefighters from Ohio rescued 10 people on Sunday, including one rescue that was performed in tandem with a California search-and-rescue unit. And photos on Facebook and Twitter showed the Cajun Navy and its dozens of boats headed to Texas from Louisiana — Americans helping Americans.
This is what the country is all about, and what it is actually like: Not neo-Nazis and hooded bullies setting fires on campus but real people extending their helping hands.
Families band together in hard and dark times and so do communities and nations.
Southeast Texas is far from out of the woods, and we are told that the state will need years to recover. But recover it will, with the help of a nation that can only thank Texans for reminding us of who we are.
We are still a nation of neighbors — a nation, as G.K. Chesterton said, “with the soul of a church.”
First Published August 30, 2017, 12:30 p.m.
