Climate Change, Ignorance, and Hate

Some Americans have been fed years of propaganda and lies no longer want to share a country with the rest of us. They share blame for the Texas flooding tragedy.

In the 1980s, I lived near Wrigley Field in Chicago in one of the city’s courtyard buildings. That’s the type of building that people who don’t live here got to know in the movie While You Were Sleeping. The building had four entryways, each leading to a stairway that went up four floors and had two apartments per floor. The units were nice, and rent was $350 a month.

We all knew each other, at least by sight.

During that time, the neighborhood became “Boystown,” later Chicago’s first recognized gay neighborhood. And during that time, AIDS arrived. My neighbors grew sick. Several died. I started to go out with an organization called Open Hand to deliver meals to the dying. The stairwells began to smell of death.

Today it is difficult for people to imagine how frightening and how lonely this time was. COVID was something the nation shared. AIDS struck a minority population, and our government turned its back. Led by Senator Jesse Helms, the United States Senate, by a vote of 94-2 voted to ban the CDC from spending any money that might “promote or encourage, directly or indirectly, homosexual activities.” That meant the government could not talk about how condoms help prevent the spread of the disease. The House voted 358-47 in favor of the bill. President Reagan signed it.

Senator Helms blamed AIDS on the homosexual lifestyle. Rev. Jerry Falwell, the right-wing preacher and founder of Liberty University, proclaimed that “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; It is God’s punishment for a society that tolerates homosexuals.”

When a man entered a hospital, his partner had no legal right to be there with him. When he died, his partner had no right to attend his funeral. And there was so much death. From 1981 to 1992, AIDS cases rose from just 318 to more than 75,000 per year. Deaths rates grew to more than 50,000 a year.

Good people, gay and straight, never stopped fighting for the dignity of every human being. America, and in particular gay Americans, paid a terrible price. Far too late, we triumphed over the hatred.

Congress finally did step up. Scientists did their work. So did public health workers. We overcame AIDS. We overcame closed minds. In time, gay marriage became a fact. Grieving partners are no longer shunted aside.

It’s too painful to think about the lives we might have saved had we acted earlier. It’s perhaps harder to imagine the suffering we should have eased by acting more humanely.

Americans came through this terrible crisis, and we built a stronger country. We overcame powerful animus wrapped up in a bigoted version of Christianity, because enough of us would never let hate be stronger than love.

Before he died, Senator Jesse Helms recanted, and said he was wrong about AIDS.

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And yet, here we are again. Once more, politicians and preachers have ditched the gospel of love in favor of fear and hate.

This week, we learned more about the terrible tragedy in Texas. We learned that the Biden administration sent money to Kerr County to meet their need for building storm drainage, public safety facilities, and a communication system to warn people in time to get out of the very places where last week people were not warned and died.

In November of 2021, the Kerr County Commissioners met to consider spending those federal funds. At the meeting, people rose to argue against taking the money. One said, “these people are communists. They hate America. They’re teaching it in our schools. They’re invading the border as we speak. I don’t think we should take any money from the federal government because they can’t be trusted.” Another said, “We don’t need these funds. We’ll get by without them. But if you take this money you’ll be singing a contract with the devil.” The County Commissions opted not to use the money.

This week we learned that Homeland Security, which houses FEMA, could not respond to the disaster in a timely way because of budget cuts and new red tape. On July 5, the day after the flood crested and at the most important moment in the rescue effort, Secretary Kristi Noem slashed funding for the FEMA disaster assistance line. Response rates to calls for emergency assistance immediately dropped from 99.7 percent to 35.8 percent.

Noem once told reporters. “As a result, the values I hold according to biblical principles impact my decisions: we are called to love, but we’re also instructed to stand for truth.” And this week, she visited the disaster site and said, “I’m extremely grateful for God’s hand in that whole situation, because hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people were saved.”

Hundreds are dead. Children watched their camp mates get washed away. Parents are left to grieve. And those Americans who testified against taking the money that might have prevented all this? Their testimony lives on forever on YouTube for all to see.

This is not, as Jerry Falwell might have said, a god-sent flood to punish these people for their sins. It is man-made climate change, man-made ignorance, man-made hate that led to this loss of life. It is Americans who have been fed years of propaganda and lies and no longer want to share a country with the rest of us.

Meanwhile, Noem also runs ICE. At least 12 people have died in ICE custody this year. The dead include a Canadian citizen. This week saw the first fatality during an ICE raid. While emergency assistance goes unfunded, ICE’s budget tripled, and in all $170 billion will go to build a system of internal concentration camps and the forced removal of millions of residents. Many more will die.

The Trump administration is in court trying to gain the power to detain millions without due process. If they succeed, then anyone can be picked up and sent away. They say they are ridding our streets of rapists and murderers. Instead, they are taking gardeners and strawberry pickers, Walmart greeters, and who knows who else. Well, no one will know. Many will just disappear, like those campers in Texas.

We can heal from this. We can help the hateful overcome their hate. We did it before. But a terrible price will be paid. How many dead? How many disappeared? That depends on how quickly we wrestle control of the government these so-called faithful.

Maybe then, when they are out of power, like Senator Helms, they can repent. That’s between them and God. Meanwhile, we can’t wait.

Edwin Eisendrath hosts "The Big Picture" on WCPT820 AM/ Heartland Signal. He's the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a long-time management consultant, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago's public schools. You can follow him on BlueSky at eisendrath.net and Substack at “It’s the Democracy, Stupid.” Read the original column here.