As Texas battles a severe snowstorm and mass power outages this winter, Tim Boyd, the now-former Republican mayor of Colorado City, revealed his party’s plan for the deadly extreme temperatures linked to fesuiaiga o le tau. In a lengthy Facebook meli that was deleted soon after it went viral, then-Mayor Boyd told his residents that they were entirely on their own e pei o le brutal winter weather caused mayhem and deaths across the Lone Star state.
O lona faamaoni e pei o le mauaina o se vaaiga o se manu e seasea maua i le vao. “Goto pe aau [,] o lau filifiliga lea!” sa ia tusia, e aunoa ma le popole e fau ana upu i upu faaupu. Na faʻaopoopo mai Boyd, "O le Aai ma le Itumalo, faʻatasi ai ma kamupani e tuʻuina atu eletise poʻo soʻo se isi lava auaunaga e leai se mea e nofo aitalafu ai oe!" Ona o se apoapoaiga faapea e sau mai le taitai filifilia o se aai-o se tagata na filifilia moni lava e ona tagata e faamautinoa o loo galulue le malo i le lotoifale mo i latou-sa faateia.
Just as they pay their mayor, Colorado City’s residents also pay authorities to provide them with basic necessities like electricity and water. But apparently, Boyd thought an expectation of services was out of line. He conjectured, “If you don’t have electricity you step up and come up with a game plan to keep your family warm and safe.” Many Texans have tried to do just that, running their car engine in their garage to warm their homes. So far in Harris County, there have been at least 50 cases of carbon monoxide poisoning and several people have died.
“If you have no water you deal without and think outside of the box to survive and supply water to your family,” posited Boyd, expecting Texans who were searching for ways to provide their own electricity to also deal with a lack of water as pipes froze in the plummeting temperatures.
Boyd’s diatribe veered into familiar Republican territory as he blamed residents for their own plight by saying, “If you are sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your (sic) lazy [it] is [a] direct result of your raising.” It is a long-simmering idea among conservatives that Americans who depend on their government are simply paie.
Generally, white conservatives have reserved the word “lazy” for people of color who are victims of systemic racial discrimination. Indeed, the weather-related blackouts in Texas impacted the residents of minority neighborhoods disproportionately. Boyd and those who share his views would likely assume this must have been a direct result of their laziness.
itula after writing his screed, Boyd announced his resignation and apologized. But he qualified his apology by saying that he never meant to imply that the helpless elderly were the lazy ones—just everyone else. “I was only making the statement that those folks that are too lazy to get up and fend for themselves but are capable should not be dealt a handout,” he wrote in a manner that suggested he was “sorry, not sorry.”
Most Republicans are not as overt as Boyd in their faith in social Darwinism. Take Texas Kovana Greg Abbott, who instead of openly blaming Texans for their own suffering instead decided to blame climate-mitigating policies and renewable energy programs like wind power. Speaking on Fox News, Abbott railed against the “Green New Deal,” claiming that a reliance on wind turbines was disastrous because the state’s wind-generated power “thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis.” For good measure, he added, “It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary.”
The conservative Wall Street Journal, which has long been hostile to tackling climate change through renewable energy, repeated this claim in an Faatonu blaming “stricter emissions regulation” and the loss of coal-powered plants for widespread misery in the snow-blanketed South.
In fact, millions of Texans are going without power because of the Republican emphasis on cheap power over reliable power. Seeing electricity generation as a profit-making enterprise rather than the fulfillment of a public need, GOP policies in Texas have made the state vulnerable to such mass outages. Moreover, plenty of wintry areas successfully run wind turbines when properly prepared to do so. And, Abbott did not see fit to point out that harsh winter temperatures lead to frozen natural gas pipelines—the real culprit in the outages.
E tusa lava pe a majority of Texans now believe that climate change is really happening, their governor in late January tauto to “protect the oil and gas industry from any type of hostile attack from Washington.” Apparently protecting Texans from the ravages of the fossil fuel industry is not in his purview. This is hardly surprising given how much fossil fuel industry contributions have ensured Abbott’s loyalty to oil and gas interests.
E mafai ona fa'amoemoe le mafaufau fa'asao e fa'amuamua mana'oga tumaoti nai lo mea lautele. I totonu o le Republican utopia, o tagata mauʻoa e tamalii ma agavaa mo mea taua, faʻamafanafanaga, ma le ola lava ia. Afai ua latou faaseseina le faiga e manuia ai i latou lava, o lona uiga latou te popoto, e le taupulepule. I le lumanaʻi na folafola mai e Republicans, "Naʻo le malosi e ola ae vaivai le aulotu (sic)," e pei ona taʻua e Boyd post. I se isi faaupuga, o tatou ola e mafai ona faʻaalu, ma afai tatou te feoti, e mafua ona e tatau ona tatou maua ma e le lava le poto e ola ai.
This was utterly predictable. Republicans have used this same approach on health care—think of all the Republican governors who backed lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act ma opted their states out of the federal government’s Medicaid program even though a tele of Americans support Obamacare. Even more Americans support the government nationalizing health care, but Republicans warn that if the program is expanded from Medicare for those i 65 to all Americans, it will suddenly become “socialism” and thus “evil.” Their solution for health care is the status quo of a deregulated “Wild West” private insurance market.
Republicans have offered a similar approach to the coronavirus pandemic where any public safety standards set by the government are anathema to “saolotoga o le tagata lava ia,” even though a tele o tagata Amerika support such precautions. It is also how Republicans have approached poverty and rising inequality: by opposing a federal government increase to the minimum wage even though tele o Amerika want a floor of $15 an hour.
Interestingly, Republicans believe strongly in the idea of “big government” when it comes to regulating their pet social issues such as harsh anti-immigrant measures and attacks on abortion. (Meanwhile, tele o Amerika support a pathway to legalization for the undocumented and a tele supports reproductive choice.)
As Americans are subject to the brutal impacts of inevitable climate change, we face a clear choice: strong government intervention to save our lives, or a “survival of the fittest” dystopia that contemporary conservatism promises. The Texas debacle is a preview of what is to come if the free-marketeers have their way while the climate changes. The nation’s conservative party went from insisting that climate change does not exist (it is a “hoax!”) to shrugging their shoulders and telling us, as Boyd did, that we’re on our own when the consequences hit.
O lenei tusiga na gaosia e Tamaoaiga mo Tagata Uma, o se poloketi a le Independent Media Institute.
O le ZNetwork o loʻo faʻatupeina naʻo le agalelei o ana tagata faitau.
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