They Rejected the Sirens. But Who Taught Them to Fear the Sound?
how Christian Nationalists programmed small towns to see help as a threat and loyalty as survival.
I lost a family member in the recent Texas floods.
That alone would be enough. But what makes it worse is knowing it didn’t have to happen this way.
The people of Kerr County didn’t die because no one saw the flood coming. The Weather Service issued warnings. The state had known for years the area needed a siren system. FEMA funds were available. But when those funds came from the Biden administration, Kerr County said no—twice.
In 2021, the county commissioners rejected federal dollars to build an early-warning system. At public meetings, residents demanded they “send the money back,” calling the Biden administration a “treasonous communist government.” They feared “strings attached.” They feared control.
By the time they changed their minds, it was too late. The sirens were never installed. And when the waters came, they came in silence.
But this post isn’t just about a local government’s bad decision.
It’s about why they made it.
Because I’ve spent time in these small towns. I’ve walked into local businesses and seen the propaganda playing on their TVs nonstop. I’ve watched as Fox News, Newsmax, and Evangelical fear-mongers rewired reality right in front of my eyes. They live in a world where FEMA is the deep state, where liberals are godless threats to the family, and where Donald Trump is the last line of defense against total collapse.
This isn’t just misinformation. It’s a manufactured worldview, engineered and sustained by the Christian Nationalist right and the architects of Project 2025. It’s the Heritage Foundation’s America—one where every government service becomes a Trojan horse and every disaster a loyalty test.
And here's the thing: I don’t blame the people. I blame the system that raised them in isolation. The echo chamber. The weaponized sermons. The right-wing infrastructure that made rejecting flood sirens seem like virtue.
But I’m not letting the left off the hook either.
Because while rural America was getting programmed, the liberal response was often to walk away. Rage-baiting influencers like John Pavlovitz—himself a former evangelical pastor—now make a living telling boomers on Substack to cut off MAGA relatives like it’s an act of moral resistance.
What we don’t hear from him is a roadmap for repair. No strategies for understanding or de-escalation. Just more moral high ground. More broken ties.
Meanwhile, the people trapped in this alternate reality are still there. Still watching. Still drowning.
🧩 Until we recognize that rural America didn’t abandon reality—it was evacuated from it—we will keep losing lives, trust, and ground.
We can’t fix what we won’t look at. And we won’t break the spell until we stop treating it like a punchline.
This isn’t about changing their minds with facts. It’s about disrupting the source of the fiction—and asking why we keep letting it run unchecked.
This flood won’t be the last.
But it should be the last one where the sirens were offered, and turned away.
🕊️ **If you’re looking for a way to push back against the rising tide of Christian Nationalism—not with hate, but with clarity and courage—**I created a meme card you can share. It’s called the Patron Saint Against Christian Nationalism, and you can find it here:
Virgin Monk Boy: Patron Saint Against Christian Nationalism
He started as a tulpa—a thought-form created in sacred mischief.
Sometimes resistance looks like protest. Sometimes it looks like truth in satire. Sometimes it just looks like reminding people who they really are.
If this stirred your soul, unplugged your autopilot, or whispered “You came for more than this” into your scroll-weary heart—share it with your fellow seekers, tip your mystical barista, or subscribe for more fire-lit dispatches from the edge of becoming.
I am so very sorry for your loss.. Thank you so much for channeling your grief to build awareness during such a difficult time.
You didn’t just name the policy failure — you named the ideological machinery behind it.
You captured something I’ve been trying to say, shout, and write around for weeks--and you did it with clarity, moral precision, and so much courage.
"They didn’t die because no one saw the flood coming. They died because help was offered, and propaganda told them to say no.”
That line knocked the breath out of me.
And then you went further—connecting the dots between rural indoctrination, right-wing media ecosystems, and the left’s often performative moral distance. That part? I felt in my bones.
I’ve also been writing about this moment, about the sirens that never came, about the system that chooses optics over obligation, about kids sleeping in cages or drowning in the dark. But your piece reminded me that this isn’t just a policy crisis — it’s a psychological one. And one we have to name, out loud, without shame or apology.
The way you described the people trapped in that worldview—not as villains, but as hostages to an architecture of fear, was the most compassionate act of resistance I’ve seen in a long time.
I needed that reminder.
So thank you — for telling the truth, for saying the quiet parts loudly, and for offering a version of patriotism that looks like clarity, grief, and the refusal to give up on our neighbors.
Your work matters more than you know. And I see you.
I am very sorry for your loss of a family member.
It may be difficult but it is necessary to not give up on each other.
Many times in my life I have seen people have a change of heart all because someone they didn't expect held their hand out when they needed to be lifted up.
Look at how Mexico sent rescuers after all the negative stereotypes spewed in their direction. They saw people not political positioning.