Loss Unfathomable...

I love New Orleans.  Yes, it's dirty, smelly city full of poverty and crime, and a kind of X-rated Disneyland for low-class sleazy tourism.  But it also has beauty, history, music, art, architecture, world-class cuisine and wonderful people.

About 15 years ago I went there for a conference.  I had just started sort-of dating a co-worker, and I think both of of were a bit skeptical about the idea.  There was a storm that August too, and a torrential downpour shook the huge glass walls of the hotel's atrium.  As a southerner living in a California suffering from years of drought, my co-worker was delighted by the rain.  She wanted to go out, and would not be deterred.  So she and her girlfriend walked gleefully out in the storm with the hoods of their brightly colored jackets pulled tight around their smiling faces.  I followed along behind in my drab raincoat and fedora while lightning crashed overhead.  I thought these crazy women were out in a hurricane.  Turns out it wasn't even that big a storm for New Orleans.

When the weather turned finer we waited in line at K-Paul's, and a surly waiter convinced my to get the swordfish I didn't want which turned out to be one of the most amazing meals I'd ever eaten.  Spurred by the glow of Prudhomme's hot pepper martinis, we bar-hopped all night long, buoyed along on cheap drinks and a constant flow of nearly transcendent jazz and blues.

That time is etched in my memory.  That crazy southern woman is now my wife, but that magical place we shared is gone, forever changed by a new kind of attack.  The city was destroyed by the policy terrorism of George W Bush.

Of course nothing could have helped him to predict or plan for 9/11.  Not the early 2001 FEMA report that listed a terrorist attack on New York City as one of the top three disaster risks.  Not the August PDB boldly titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the U.S."  Not the flaming hair of his CIA director channeling the "whispers" from his field agents.  Not the constant warnings of his counter-terrorism czar.  But, he whines, if he had known when and where the attack would occur he would have moved heaven and earth to stop it.

Well this time he knew.  That same FEMA report four years ago listed a major hurricane in New Orleans as another of the top three potential disasters.  Why then did he gut FEMA to replace it with homeland security, but then never get around to actually replacing it?  Why did he and his congress refuse the paltry 27 million that the Corps wanted to reinforce the levees around Lake Pontchartrain?  Katrina was on the radar screens a week before it struck the French Quarter.  Why didn't the president cut short his vacation a few days?  Why didn't the millions of fully conscious citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi mean as much to him as a single brain-dead woman in Florida?  Why did he not mobilize all the forces at his disposal so that they could be close enough to prevent loss of life?  Why didn't he intervene when his department of homeland security stopped aid workers from getting to the area because they were Canadian?

He did none of those things.  What little response he did offer is too little and too late.  2 million MREs -- for a million refugees that's what, a lunch and a dinner?  Isn't he supposed to be "compassionate," or does that apply only to members of his class and constituency?

This is exactly the kind of thing that government is for.  There is no way for people to deal with these kinds of disasters on their own.  No combination of personal preparedness and corporate self-interest is able to respond in a meaningful way to events on this scale.  It requires a centrally organized corps of volunteers and experts, paid for by everyone to provide for our common security.  This is what domestic tranquility, the common defense, and the general Welfare is all about.  How can someone sworn to protect the Constitution so neglect his duties?

It's also about national security.  If our citizens are dying here at home they are by definition not secure.  And even if you don't care about poor black people in the path of a storm, as many on the right appear not to, the shutdown of the port of New Orleans spells disaster for not only the people of the south and central U.S. but for businesses and industry there.  What do you want to bet more than a few of them will get bailed out by Bush?

Bush dismantled and defunded all the agencies that are set up for the express purpose of handling national crises of this type.  He funneled money away from cities and states, who know best how to spend for their local security, and into tax cuts for the rich and federal boondoggles like homeland security.  He squandered our armed forces and their expertise and hardware on a needless war for uncertain goals.  Worst of all he placed state National Guard units an ocean away from their homes and loved ones who they signed up to help but must now simply watch, horrified and helpless.

And yet this very failure will be fed back into the right wing ideological meat grinder as more evidence of their central dogma.  Government doesn't work.  Politicians are all crooks and liars.  Taxes are wasted.  Don't pay your taxes to help protect you from 1000-year floods.  You'd be better off keeping your little tax money and buying a rubber raft and a shotgun.  We'll take your money to protect you from terrorists, yes (provided that any attack that could not be perfectly predicted beforehand is not our fault), and for waging wars of aggression, but for natural disasters, poverty, crime, urban blight, disease, pollution -- in short, anything that can be certain to happen -- you're on your own.  You know the risks as well as we do, so it's your job to avoid them.  We can't help you.

The real disaster here is the Bush presidency.  Bush and his policies are responsible for massive loss of life and the destruction of one of America's most treasured landmarks.  This is not "the blame game" -- the blame is clear.  Bush isn't just asleep at the wheel, this is a direct result of his conservative ideology and his plutocratic policy.  Certainly we have to help the victims now, and we have to mourn and rebuild.  But we must also have accountability.  Where government must act and does not, our leaders have failed.  Enough is enough.

- jack*

UPDATE: Mrs Asterisk informs me that her walk in the rain was in April, not August, so it was a completely different type of storm.  Ah yes, I remember it well...

Comments

[gmanedit]

Is the Red Cross the best place to donate?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-walden/how-much-is-too-much_b_6711.html

[jack*]

So what are some good secular alternatives?

[paperwight]

I hear ACORN, and Direct Relief International.

You could also donate through the NAACP; they've got a disaster relief fund, and it might be a good show of solidarity with the majority of people in NOLA who really got hurt.