It’s not a happy metaphor, I know, given the awful news out of the Texas Hill Country. I’ve experienced climate-change-exacerbated flooding more than a few times in my part of Wisconsin, and know it all too well. But maybe with time, the symbolism of the phrase will prove all too apt.
The forced passing of the Big Horrible Bill left me with the same gut feeling of despair that came with Trump being elected and reelected. On those days, I’ve tuned out the news because it is just too much to bear. But the unnecessarily urgent passing of the bill in the Senate and House required such severe contortions, distortions, and lies, and such abject arm- and leg- and neck-twisting. In the aftermath, the hypocrite “fiscal conservatives” forced themselves to cheer, scurried away from any questioning, and offered no excuse for themselves or their despicable boot-licking. Lisa Murkowski’s ten seconds of frozen self-owning may stand as the exact moment of the high water mark.
With flooding, one never knows when the next episode will come, and possibly even exceed the last high-water mark. The future will surely bring more inundations of falsehood, cruelty, shame, bullying, and bluster. The reactionary media machinery will of course do the billionaires’ bidding, and hide the truth from the even those most hurt in MAGA world. But now the consequences of the MAGA cult/movement will inevitably begin to pile up, and the wreckage will come to rest visibly across the political landscape. It will be there for all to see and, alas, experience.
I hope I am right. In any case, this feels different to me. My 48 hours of despair have begun to let up. It feels like now we can begin to build back, every single day, especially over the next 364, as we work to reclaim our democracy by July 4, 2026 and the elections that follow. But only if such building happens from the ground up, in every community and every watershed.
