Speaking to Sputnik Radio's Loud & Clear With Brian Becker, Dr. Gerald Horne, a professor of history at the University of Houston, says the "racial dynamic of which conservatism is notorious" contributes to the nation's inability to successfully help residents.
"We need a rush of federal assistance, a rush of state assistance from Austin," Horne said. "But part of the contradiction is that Houston, and Texas more specifically, are the citadel of conservatism which, of course, tends to denigrate and downplay the role of government."
Horne goes on to add that despite officials trying to disparage the role of government, Texas needs it now "more than ever and that rhetoric has now come back to bite some of us who never engaged in the rhetoric" to begin with.
Considering Republican views on climate change, Horne quickly pointed out the growing discussion on whether climate change played a role in causing or worsening the impact of the now Tropical Storm Harvey.
"In light of climate change, the need for government becomes more urgent than it was previously because it's clear that individual effort, no matter how courageous or muscular, will not be able to attack and confront the kind of catastrophe that we are now confronting in the city of Houston and the region more generally.
Zeroing in on US President Donald Trump's response to the destruction left behind in Hurricane Harvey's wake, Horne says the public needs to steer away from the "notion of the 500-year flood and the 1,000-year flood."
"It tends to gloss over the fact that society is constructed with poor drainage systems," Horne urged. "Building and flood zones with poor insurance programs — they're almost constructed to generate catastrophe and almost constructed to generate a fertile field of exploitation for hucksters of the rankous sort."
With sneaky "hucksters" trying to gouge gas and water prices for escaping residents and "lure [Houstonians] into false insurance claims," Horne says it's only a matter of time before the US government will be forced to own up to its "construction" of "a fertile field of exploitation."
