Edward Strickler: A story of disaster voyeurism

Published 9:52 pm Thursday, July 24, 2025

Disasters are nothing new to humanity.  And we are disaster voyeurs. Humans are curious creatures: we watch a disaster unfolding and go  ‘oh my, look at that!’ Humans are also helping creatures, saying ‘look at that, how can we help?’ Our disaster voyeurism is unfolding again with the Texas floods.

As we watch we’ll learn more about the causes of the wall of water; about Republican dominated politics in Texas that resisted spending on public safety warning systems; about what happens when we defund sciences that could help prevent, predict and respond to disasters, disease outbreaks, and other calamities.  

President Trump said, viewing the devastation, “it’s just hard to believe … a little narrow river that becomes a monster. And that’s what happened”. But science had already accurately predicted the ‘monster’ many years ago. ‘Massive walls of water’ from just ‘three to four inches of rain’ is the exact phrase used in a 2017 video produced by the local Texas government. Claiming the deaths to be an ‘act of God’ is blasphemous and evades government accountability.

Unaccountable politicians will want us to drive on by, and the President, brilliantly, as he does, dangles distractions. Sashaying more tariff threats down the runway. Sassily threatening to deport Rosie O’Donnell. Continuing to cover up the Epstein facts. Some call this b-s’ing.  Buddhism calls this distracting, restless chatter the ‘monkey mind’, like a monkey leaping here to there and back again, moved by satisfaction seeking and compulsions rather than focused truth seeking and truth speaking.

The 24/7 media disaster sphere

The chattering 24/7 media sphere – television, Internet, smart phones, etc –  are in business to feed our already chattering monkey minds. However humanity got that monkey mind – evolution? genes? Alien viruses? eating bad fruit? etc  – social media learned quickly how to make money from it, designing clever algorithms to feed it. Former UVA social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has described how social media algorithms are profoundly harming children. And the algorithms of pornography are profoundly harming everyone, including children. Algorithms promoting doom scrolling are great money making opportunities to pile up ‘views’ and ‘comments’ and acquire ‘subscribers’. One preacher about the Texas floods on Youtube had over 400,000 views and 1500 comments, on a site that  – according to Youtube data –  makes over $300,000 annually. WWJD?

The 24/7 social media sphere is full of preachers chattering about God and the flood:  chattering that we are living in evil times like ‘Noah’s days’ so the flood is surely God’s doing’; chattering that Satan can make floods too; chattering that it is all about Eve disobeying God and disobeying her husband.  Some Right theorists blame ‘cloud seeding’, and some claim that anti-White conspirators were somehow involved. 

He would deport God

One preacher cited a quip reportedly from the Texas governor that he ‘would deport God too, if God were an illegal immigrant’ and wondered if the Texas devastation was God showing displeasure at the Governor’s blasphemy.  Others claimed that the governor never said that and that the quip was AI chatter. Now we have AI to worry about, too.

Preacher-chatter about coming doom and the likelihood that you’ll end up in disaster if you don’t support their ministry is familiar to Virginians. We produced two of the most famous and influential: The Rev. Jerry Falwell and The Rev. Pat Robertson claimed that a city flying ‘gay pride’ flags (speaking particularly about Orlando during special Disney World events) could “bring about terrorist bombs; it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.” Whoa! Perhaps we should take blaspheming flag waving more seriously. Alert to owners and acolytes of that huge flag flying over Prince Edward County:  wear hard hats?! Even microscopic meteors will sting.

The Anglican political scholar Os Guinness regards the Right’s science denialism to be as harmful as the Left’s authoritarian uses of scientism (that sciency ideas must replace moral values).  Scientific inquiry, and public policies derived from scientific findings, should be welcomed and allied with democratic protections of liberty, and democratic promises of justice, particularly in light of Christian theological and moral traditions, including Biblical claims of God’s goodness, righteousness and mercy, and our duties to our neighbors (including, please take note, immigrants and refugees that the Bible commands us to protect, not to purge. 

Climate science denialism, vaccine science denialism, a push to defund public health and public safety, and just bizarre conspiracy theories – are offensive to a just and righteous society. Will the avoidable deaths of so many young children break the Right’s fever dream? Yes, the Left has fever dreams too, but for now, we are living through the Right’s dream of power and control.