Just broken today

Pecan tree on my house - Katrina 2005

Every year since 2005, August 29th has been hard, but this year harder than most. The 20th anniversary has made the reminders constant, and today, I'm just broken.

So many layers. Still, guilt that as bad as it was for me and my family, we were so incredibly lucky. The worst loss for me was my loss of faith in the United States. The tangible suffering in the city of New Orleans with an incomprehensible level of apathy from so many parties. Naming names won't help. But thousands of citizens were stranded without food or water, and a cluster of incompetence and disregard left them that way for days on end. Little did we know at that time that for many the nightmare of recovery was just beginning.

I know part of what is making this year particularly hard is the current dismantling of the federal government. Just this week, a number of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees wrote a letter to Congress advising them that "the Trump administration had reversed much of the progress made in disaster response and recovery since Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast two decades ago."

For their efforts, the employees that signed the letter were placed on administrative leave. The heartbreak I felt in the post-Katrina hellscape has now become a constant companion. The country I grew up in and loved is unrecognizable to me. Just as it was 20 years ago.

The extended response to Katrina, the way the nation eventually rallied around the rebuilding of New Orleans renewed my faith that we were who we said we were. I don't see that happening again.

Our lawmakers are numb to children being murdered in church and schools, worshiping automatic weapons of war more than any deity. They have given blind fealty to a 34 time convicted felon. A man who enabled a serial sexual assaulter of children. A man who multiple credible testimonies accuse of raping children himself.

And they do nothing while this criminal backs away from our promise to Ukraine, and continues to fund the genocide being committed in Gaza. They do nothing as he deploys troops against our citizens, denies due process to people picked up by his masked thugs pretending to be law enforcement, and fires scientists, and doctors, and career civil servants who have dedicated their lives to making this country the best it could be.

I don't know if I will even publish this post. I have tried to stay away from politics on this blog, but I'm starting to feel like I can't be true to my Catholic values if I don't speak out against these practices that reject all of the behaviors that Jesus asked us to practice.

Read James, Chapter 2. And then decide for yourself.