the mismanagement of this incident is so grotesque that it is bound to spawn a whole new genre of tinfoilerie -- could such a stunning fiasco really have happened without a LIHOP component? my faith in post-peak imperial stupidity is such that I think idiocy alone (well, with a dash of kneejerk classism and racism) can account for the scope of the disaster, without dragging in explicit intent or conspiracy. but for some people that won't be sufficient... and we'll have, I predict, a lot of theories about why official response was delayed, why no one thought about the evac needs of the poor and disabled, etc. the overt racism of the media response can only feed such disquiet...
I find myself thinking over and over again, "this is bad. this is very bad." the way you do when you've just sprained or broken something and the realisation is sinking in that it's serious. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessnes or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...
F. Scott pretty much summed up Bush-type people more than 80 years ago. You've got to be a carefully-taught rentier to achieve this level of indifference. My mind is aglow with whirling transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention. -- Hedley Lamarr.
WE built the city on a floodplain, WE pumped out the groundwater, WE put up the flood walls, WE didn't have a plan for getting people out of the city...
It all depends on how we define "we". No human agency could have kept Katrina from doing some damage to NOLA. But there's damage and there's damage, and there are big differences in human costs as well. Different policies under different leadership can make a difference. Is anyone prepared to argue at this point that elections don't matter and it doesn't make any difference who wins?
[crickets chirp]
[paint dries]
[grass grows]
I thought not. My mind is aglow with whirling transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention. -- Hedley Lamarr.
President Clinton and Al Gore came to assess the damage immediately.
My father spent a whole day sandbagging with Gore.
There was a National Guard truck on every street corner. Probably more National Guard were in my area than are in the whole country at this point.
There was water, food and shelter for everyone.
Prison inmates were brought in to help with the clean up and the levees...
No, it was nothing on the scale of this, but there was no blaming, no "we couldn't have forseen..." no unnecessary tragedy ... Just everyone banding together and getting to work. Everyone thought FEMA was joke then too, but when they sat twiddling their thumbs and shuffling paper work, the people simply took it upon themselves to do the work. None of this finger pointing and running around in a panic. It's like a bunch of stoned teenagers are running this show saying, "Dude, that city's screwed. Shit. Let's get outta here before we get caught."
F-ing disgrace. Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
