More Katrina Ranting
Sep. 7th, 2005 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llcoolvadI still find some things hard to fathom -- and I've been mystified by them all week. I'm trying to think about this stuff in an orderly fashion but I keep getting stuck on bits, like a scratch on a record:
So honestly, WHAT THE FUCK?!
How did these people end up in such dire circumstances? I suspect that there is a multi-layered answer to all of this, and it's so complicated that we'll never get to the bottom of it no matter how many independent counsels they throw at it. It's not as simplistic as "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and it's certainly not some conspiracy to kill off poor people. But it would seem that it does involve callousness in the extreme -- the callousness of the federal government leaders, not convinced that even water topping a levee might cause more than minor inconvenience, certainly not enough to cancel a vacation over. Callousness possibly even brought on by the endless hurricane season and the terribly unreliable weather prediction system, leading to "Cry Wolf" syndrome.
And of course I believe the attitude of the Republican party, the anti-Big Government party, is probably THE major contributor to this disaster: cutting the budget of FEMA, sending troops overseas, starting a "Homeland Security" division and not actually funding it well enough for it to be effective. People who voted for this party perhaps are beginning to understand just what you get when you "cut taxes."
Combine all of this with a local government that for years was judged to be utterly corrupt, add to it some inexplicable breakdown in communications (Hello. Happened on 9/11. Still happening now, WHY?) and throw in an assload of guns and fear, and you've got complete utter disaster all over the place.
I suspect that a small part of the real reason buses didn't take people out sooner (or boats, or planes, or trains) was that really, no one knew where to put the people once they were out. Secretly everyone in surrounding areas hoped they wouldn't have to deal with it all, that water wouldn't actually do any damage other than ruin some carpeting and maybe flood some cars. I hope I'm wrong there.
Benevolent neglect? Callousness? Sometimes it doesn't have to be overt to still count as evil.
I really can't think logically about this. There is too much information. There is too little information.
And finally, after watching several hours of coverage about toxins and e.coli and lead and parasites and fecal matter all in the water, now being pumped out of the city and into Lake Pontchartrain, I can't help but wonder about the long-term impact to the environment...like I needed more things to worry about. More global warming, more hurricanes, more flooding, more global warming, sigh...
- We all now realize that it must not have been very hard to get in and out of parts of New Orleans if every news team in the world managed it, and if celebrities like Harry Connick Jr. managed it
- We also know that there are many examples of supplies arriving and being turned away by (local police? national guardsmen? FEMA people? petty despots? Warlords?) someone "in charge"
- We all have also heard the tale of the kid that stole the school bus and got people out, and the story of the college kids who drove down in their Hyundai and got people out, and these stories go on and on
- We now realize that there were tons of resources all over the place, waiting to be utilized, like the U.S.S. Bataan, the Wal-Mart trucks filled with water, the huge fleet of school buses that were never used to evacuate residents, etc.
- We all know that we've used air drops all over Africa, and in the Indian Ocean during the tsunami, dropping food and supplies where airstrips weren't available
So honestly, WHAT THE FUCK?!
How did these people end up in such dire circumstances? I suspect that there is a multi-layered answer to all of this, and it's so complicated that we'll never get to the bottom of it no matter how many independent counsels they throw at it. It's not as simplistic as "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and it's certainly not some conspiracy to kill off poor people. But it would seem that it does involve callousness in the extreme -- the callousness of the federal government leaders, not convinced that even water topping a levee might cause more than minor inconvenience, certainly not enough to cancel a vacation over. Callousness possibly even brought on by the endless hurricane season and the terribly unreliable weather prediction system, leading to "Cry Wolf" syndrome.
And of course I believe the attitude of the Republican party, the anti-Big Government party, is probably THE major contributor to this disaster: cutting the budget of FEMA, sending troops overseas, starting a "Homeland Security" division and not actually funding it well enough for it to be effective. People who voted for this party perhaps are beginning to understand just what you get when you "cut taxes."
Combine all of this with a local government that for years was judged to be utterly corrupt, add to it some inexplicable breakdown in communications (Hello. Happened on 9/11. Still happening now, WHY?) and throw in an assload of guns and fear, and you've got complete utter disaster all over the place.
I suspect that a small part of the real reason buses didn't take people out sooner (or boats, or planes, or trains) was that really, no one knew where to put the people once they were out. Secretly everyone in surrounding areas hoped they wouldn't have to deal with it all, that water wouldn't actually do any damage other than ruin some carpeting and maybe flood some cars. I hope I'm wrong there.
Benevolent neglect? Callousness? Sometimes it doesn't have to be overt to still count as evil.
I really can't think logically about this. There is too much information. There is too little information.
And finally, after watching several hours of coverage about toxins and e.coli and lead and parasites and fecal matter all in the water, now being pumped out of the city and into Lake Pontchartrain, I can't help but wonder about the long-term impact to the environment...like I needed more things to worry about. More global warming, more hurricanes, more flooding, more global warming, sigh...
