Message From Hurricane Harvey: Americans Helping Each Other
Reported by Joel B. Pollak | 28 Aug 2017
After three days of Hurricane Harvey, the message emerging from Houston and the Texas coast is not one of chaos and destruction, but of collective strength, as Americans help each other survive through the worst of circumstances.
For once, cable news is not dominated by talking heads shouting at each other, but by images of volunteers, black and white, arriving in flat-bottomed boats to rescue neighbors from flooded buildings. Journalists are helping to direct emergency crews to save stranded drivers rather than encouraging enraged mobs to riot against the police.
And President Donald Trump, attacked for weeks for allegedly dividing the nation, is drawing attention to its unity.
At a joint press conference Monday with the president of Finland, President Trump said:
Tragic times such as these bring out the best in America’s character. Strength, charity and resilience are those characters. We see neighbor helping neighbor, friend helping friend, and stranger helping stranger. And you see that all over. If you watch on television, you just see such incredible work and love, and teamwork.
We are one American family. We hurt together, we struggle together, and, believe me, we endure together. We are one family.
Finland’s leader, too, remarked: “It has been touching to watch the TV and see how people help each other. That is what we basically are built of — helping each other.”
Remarkably, President Trump is winning praise for the federal government’s management of the crisis thus far. He is planning to visit the region on Tuesday, avoiding the mistakes made by his two predecessors. George W. Bush infamously flew over the devastation of Hurricane Katrina; Barack Obama, knowing he would never be held to the same standard, golfed on Martha’s Vineyard during massive Louisiana floods until Trump shamed him into visiting.
But the story of Hurricane Harvey is bigger than the president alone. It is also a story about the importance of state and local governments, which were so woefully negligent in Katrina, but which faced Harvey fully prepared. (In the former case, Democrats were in charge; in the latter, many — though not all — of the key officials are Republicans.)
Most of all, the story of Hurricane Harvey is about what Americans can do without government: the neighbors who are giving each other shelter from the storms; the “Cajun Navy” from Louisiana, a volunteer armada of small boats, en route to help with search and rescue efforts; the non-profit organizations organizing grass-roots relief efforts.
All of that is happening, notably, in the South — a region the left had targeted for a miniature Cultural Revolution in recent weeks, as mobs swarmed historic Confederate memorials (or anything old enough to be held in suspicion). The South was deemed by its cultural betters to be just as backward and racist as ever, a living rebuke to the nation.
Instead, the people of Texas are showing the world that beneath the mindless political rhetoric, we remain united and strong.
The political winner thus far is President Trump. The real winner is us, the United States of America.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Reported by 
Peter Hasson | Associate Editor | 10:31 PM 08/16/2017
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While the media spent its time connecting riots to the political right, the hard left continued to step up its tactics to promote social discord, as it has been doing for years.
On Monday afternoon, a crowd of people in an “Emergency Durham Protest” marched down Durham’s Main Street, then made its way to the Durham County Courthouse. The Herald Sun reported that organizations like the “Triangle People’s Assembly, Workers World Party, Industrial Workers of the World, Democratic Socialists of America, and the Antifa movement” were at the rally.
One of the participants, Eva Panjwani of the Workers World Party Durham, said in an interview:
The larger group was comprised of people demonstrating with various left-wing slogans such as a “No Trump, No KKK, No Racist USA” banner, pro-socialist Che Guevara shirts, and numerous odes to abolishing capitalism. One individual held a sign that said, “Cops and clan go hand in hand,” as the group marched past police officers.
The crowd gathered in front of the courthouse and decided to target a statue that was created in memoriam to “the boys who wore the gray.” That is, the North Carolina soldiers who fought for the Confederate Army in the Civil War.
>>> I Went to Charlottesville During the Protests. Here’s What I Saw.
What followed was a scene reminiscent of the French Revolution or the war in Iraq.
The rage-filled protesters tore down the statue and proceeded to kick and desecrate it. The surging mass of people hooted and hollered as individuals took turns spitting on and flipping off the generic visage of a young Southern soldier.
In the aftermath, some of the protesters took pictures in front of the crumpled-up bronze statue that had been pulverized in the fall.
However, the attack was fitting as a mirror to the “alt-right” march that had taken place at the foot of a Gen. Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville. The individuals portrayed by the monuments were simply irrelevant.
>>> Why Cities Shouldn’t Take Down Confederate Statues
This isn’t a battle over ideas or the Confederacy’s place in American history, it’s sheer and mindless identity politics.
American towns and cities are now increasingly being besieged by agitators who flaunt the law, direct their hate toward fellow citizens, and openly attack the crucial principles at the heart of the American way of life. The resounding message that these events send is that in 2017, it’s impossible for this country to accept people of different creeds and points of views. You are either on the “right side of history,” as President Barack Obama said, or you are on the wrong side. The narrative is increasingly join us, or be crushed.
Perhaps the protesters should pay more attention to what happened in our Civil War, which claimed more lives than all of our other wars combined. Perhaps they should study the leaders who, however imperfectly, tried to bind regions and people together to move on from a civil feud that pitted brother against brother and American against American. And perhaps they should have studied the people, like Lee and President Abraham Lincoln, who tried to piece the shattered puzzle of American nationhood back together.
Alas, those concepts were lost in a sordid trampling of an old, barely noticed statue. Unless leaders pay increased devotion to denouncing and taking action against these lawless demonstrations, mob rule is here to stay.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jarrett Stepman/ @JarrettStepman