Friday, September 02, 2005

So This is What It's Come To

Are we Margaret Thatcher’s Britain yet?

No, seriously, just as the British had to wait for the chickens to come home to roost on Thatcherite policies before they could see how horrible they are for humanity, are we now experiencing the stark truth of what Bush’s policies and the culture he represents means for human life in our country? I think the answer is a resounding yes.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, wondering what is creating the complete chaos in the city. I mean, on a purely intellectual level, I understand the desperation and the plight of being poor and having everything ripped from you. I really do; and hell, if you see the people who are supposed to be “above” you pulling a virtual smash-and-grab on society, without any thought for those below them, what do you think will be your first instinct when you learn that you have to fend for yourself, that the people who are supposed to protect and help you are abandoning you? I am not in any way condoning or apologizing for the murder, rape, and violence going on in the city, but I understand how the situation has escalated to this point: the rise of the culture of greed and self-interest (otherwise known as the “culture of life”) over the culture of civic pride and duty and love or at least respect of neighbors (otherwise known as the “culture of death”).

The looters and the awful response from the Federal Government are just two sides of the same tarnished penny, symptoms of this national illness that has overtaken us. Hastert’s comments yesterday and Bush’s flippancy and rejection of foreign aid are just some small examples of this illness, this sick hubris of placing self over all other concerns, even the lives of other people.

Will America turn its back on the victims? I don’t think so. I think we can see the rejection of this hideous culture beginning to form, in the anger of those who voted for Bush and see how the administration and its representatives are caring for their people, in the faces of news anchors who are finally waking from their stupor of the past five years, and in the pain that people are facing when they go to the gas pump.

I'll make it simple for the folks who think in terms of dollars and cents rather than human lives and quality of life: we pay these people. They are our employees. What follows is supposed to be the best they can give us. Do you really believe that? Can you afford to believe that?





(From Newshounds): Mike Brown, head of FEMA was just featured, moments ago (9/1, 6:45 pm), on The Abrams Report on MSNBC. Brown was asked: "But what about the convention center? We saw some very graphic images coming from out of there, these are not people that just missed one meal or two, these are people saying officials told us to go here, there is no food, no water, is that true?"

Brown responded: "I don't know whether officals told them to go there or not, but I will tell you very candidly, we learned about the convention center today, being the federal government. We learned today that there are 3,000 people there."

(From CNN):The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates.

Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands.

"Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Brown told CNN.

"I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans," he said.

From the Post: President Bush repeatedly requested less money for programs to guard against catastrophic storms in New Orleans than many federal and state officials requested, decisions that are triggering a partisan debate over administration priorities at a time when the budget is strained by the Iraq war.

”I don’t think anyone knew the levees would break.” – President Bush

So the Gulf Coast has gone all Mad Max, women are being raped in the Superdome, and Rice is enjoying a brief vacation in New York.

Meanwhile…



These are the guardians at the gate. These are the representatives of the new selfishness. How can we ever trust them again?

Posted by crimnos @ 6:45 AM