Monthly Archives: September 2005

by

For Shame


Thoughts on Katrina | September 10th, 2005

  • How did GW run on keeping & making us safer with a response to an emergency no better than to an insurgency?

  • How did 5 million people (plus) estimate so wrong?

  • How did they vote their conscience & give him a second term?

  • How could a natural disaster, with all of its advanced warnings fell such a government?

Politics.

To consider this further – what do we think would happen if a dirty bomb exploded or a nuclear plant was destroyed? What do we now think of our leader & his capability to handle a disaster of that magnitude? Perhaps Michael Brown could ride an Arabian stallion to our rescue? Perhaps the rest of the FEMA team could get together & figure it out for us.

I hear the wheels of that American institution grinding. We love you, now mess up, we sink our teeth into you. It is the oldest game, and one that happens to Martha Stewart and OJ alike. From the King of Pop to the Leader of the free world – a blowjob in the white house seems small in comparison to letting the poor & disenfranchised die in a toxic wasteland caused by a levee that should have been repaired instead of a war for Democracy.

Having lived and grown up during the recession of the 70’s & seeing gasoline hit all time highs, that are quickly eclipsed by today’s numbers, and lines of people at the pumps, with poverty & rationing and probably what I thought was America’s darkest hour. Coming off of a hugely unsuccessful war into a miasma that seems like Downtown New Orleans does today, I can only wonder how we got here?

How when history was so clear in the past – that becoming entrenched in someone else’s country to bring it Democracy can so easily divert your attention from the economic struggle at home as to make you lose sight of the real priorities. I am young in comparison & the generations before me – who have lived through it can only shudder to think it is happening again.

I was just a child then, and I’m no chicken little – the sky is not falling, but the levee is breaking. The floodwaters may recede over time, but they will leave behind them a lingering feeling and a pungent odor. That stench should be recalled every time the Bush presidency is mentioned for years to come. In schools a century from now they will say Bush – stole the first presidency (with Renqhuist’s help) & had the second ruined by a hurricane. Of 9/11 – I’d like them to say Guilliani rose to the occasion, as he did. His comments during & after still send chills up my spine. This was a man I despised & loathed who wrapped us all into a great big hug & said it will be alright.

The good people of Louisiana needed a New Yawker in their time of need. Unflappable, unprepared, but working off his cuff. Somehow I don’t see the mayor or the governor making tearful speeches as thousands of funerals over the coming months in New Orleans. I see nothing more than shame and dishonor and names that will become synonymous with despicable. Catchphrases that will not even remember where they got their start: “I just pulled a Babineaux Blanco on you” or “That is so Nagin”

Let the infamy begin.