Texan Stoicism Provides Comfort, and Excuses, After the Flood

Faced with an unfathomable disaster like the July 4 flooding, Texans have found pride, and maybe some comfort in their identity as Texans, strong, silent, stoical and resilient.

It can be seen on the “Texas Proud” T-shirts at the H.E.B., the grocery store chain that was founded more than a century ago in Kerrville, the epicenter of the flood. It’s there in a muddy state flag, rescued from the ground and attached to a flowering tree at the entrance to the town of Hunt, where the Guadalupe River cut through with frightening ferocity.

For miles along the river’s edge, the Lone Star Flag outnumbers the Stars and Stripes.

“Let me explain one thing about Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbott said last Tuesday when questioned about the failures of state and local officials to provide better flood warnings. He then reached for analogy from the state’s obsession with football. “Every football team makes mistakes,” he said. “The way winners talk is not to point fingers. They talk about solutions. What Texas is all about is solutions.”

Those who did otherwise, he said, were “losers.”

That image of Texans who would rather rush to help the victims than blame the government has been useful to elected officials from President Trump to Mr. Abbott to Kerr County commissioners and likely a comfort to some in the floodplain of the Texas Hill Country.

But in the days since Mr. Abbott’s comments, it has become clear that Texans were doing both — rushing to help and questioning their government.

They were helping out with donations of fuel and food, opening their homes to the displaced and tearing through the river’s debris in search of the dead.