Doing Our Level Worst

THE IMAGES OF A DROWNING CITY that flooded television screens yesterday were almost unfathomable--bodies of the dead floating aimlessly in brackish, oil-slicked water; other bodies propped against building walls, handwritten notes on loose leaf paper clipped to their clothes in the hope that someday relatives might be able to claim them; dehydrated infants, barely conscious, clutched to the breasts of hysterical mothers; the fetid overflow from the city's futile toilets slopping the floor of the Superdome, which looks like a Civil War-era battlefield hospital and mortuary; roving gangs of thugs looting stores for appliances a city where electricity must seem a dim memory; and thousands of mostly poor people, clutching maybe a single suitcase, maybe nothing, people who hadn't had anything to eat or drink in the five days since disaster struck, chanting for TV cameras: "Help! Help! Help!" Here were the residents of an American city, stranded and dying before our eyes--people news crews could reach but FEMA could not.

     Equally unfathomable to me is our own sad national incompetence and brutal cruelty. Newspapers today are full of stories about the decades of disaster planning, computer modeling, mock evacuations, and prevention ideas that pre-dated the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. More than five years ago FEMA called the storm-related flooding of New Orleans one of the three most likely catastrophic disasters for which it was preparing (the other two: a terrorist attack on NY and an earthquake in SF). After all, the city is built on land merely borrowed from the Gulf and river waters that surround it. Yet five days after the disaster for which FEMA was supposedly prepared, FEMA is a ghost agency on the rotting streets. Such a well-studied disaster scenario; such a non-existent response. Such incompetence; such tragedy.

     Before the storm, although the mayor ordered a mandatory evacuation, neither the city nor state provided transportation or shelter for the thousands of New Orleans residents living below the poverty line--men, women and children who had no means of leaving and no place to go. The evacuation models that had been draw up were all based on the idea that evacuees would have their own transportation despite the wide use of public transportation by the poor, and despite the fact that the railroads are on some of the highest ground in New Orleans. Today those untransported poor are dying in the squalor of the inundated streets.

     Although some of the looting in New Orleans, especially in these latter days as basic supplies have given out, can be explained as the acts of desperate refugees looking for water and food. Other looting began almost as soon as the storm did and has continued to this day. Perhaps that's not surprising. New Orleans had some of the highest property crime rates in the nation before the storm. Still, the surreal image of thieves, knee-deep in water, hauling away useless TVs in half-abandoned, powerless city, suggests just how deeply ingrained the need to acquire luxury goods is in even the poorest Americans. Worse,  the notion that armed thugs have thwarted rescue efforts by firing guns at helicopters and buses attempting to evacuate refugees, suggest that something else is ingrained in many of us, something violent, perverse, and destructive. Satanic, a Bible-believing man might call it.

     Watching the TV images last night shock turned to sadness and then sadness turned to anger. If I were commander in chief, I thought to myself, I know what I would do--order thousands of helicopter flights into an out of New Orleans immediately, dropping in troops to the areas with the greatest concentrations of refugees (around the Convention Center and Superdome) so that the troops could keep order among refugees as they were load on helicopter after helicopter (even if only Blackhawks could touch down carrying a dozen refugees at a time) and carried to air force bases in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas, Texas--anywhere there were barracks and latrines and kitchens. Just get those people out of what is now nothing more than a city of death, instantly, and any cost. That would be my response.

     Unfortunately this age of national incompetence and brutal cruelty, leadership comes directly from the top. The current commander in chief is completely unable to react quickly and decisively in the face of large scale events--here is the man who sat and read a children's book while the Twin Towers burned. His administration--as FEMA was in this case, as DoD was in the invasion of Iraq---is always unprepared to do the job. He never achieves his goals--how about capturing Osama bin Laden? His ideology-driven civil administration always shunts to the background the real problems and needs in order to focus on the needs of wealthy special interests and christian radicals--so the Sept. 11 plot goes undetected despite memos on his desk in the weeks before the attack, the Coast 2050 plan for New Orleans is never undertaken, and FEMA funding is slashed while insurance companies are put directly on the federal payroll in the name of Medicare "reform" and the Vice President's company gets billions of dollars in no-bid contracts from the DoD.

     Now the President says he's angry. That federal efforts are unacceptable. He IS federal efforts, and so is the Republican party. He's angry at who? Certainly not at himself. When has he ever said, "I'm disappointed in myself, in my leadership. I didn't do enough. FEMA is my agency." I'm sure we're not going to hear those words. Karl Rove would never clear them. Incompetence, diminished expectations, covering your ass, these are the hallmarks of George Bush's America.

     In July after the London subway bombings, in response to my complaints about the Bush administrations inept "war on terror" serial blog commenter Tony Alva wrote: "We can only try to do our best (no need to flame back, I know you think we're not doing our best at this moment)."

     No, we're flat out doing our level worst. At everything.

Comments

[Brouhaha]

Well said, Jason. The public officials for years have had the equivalent of a memo in their hands saying "Hurricane Determined to Strike in New Orleans" and have failed to take action to deal with it.

And the "response," to me, underlines again the degree to which we are still unprepared at home for the massive disasters that the President continues to warn us could happen here. The spending and resource priorities are all wrong, and one can't help but wonder what we will do if it is indeed only a matter of time before the hornets nest in Iraq comes back around to attack us here. If this is the best we've got...

When it all gets to depressing to contemplate, I suggest you dim the lights, play this song and imagine the once and future great City of New Orleans:

http://brouhaha.blogs.com/brouhaha/2005/09/do_you_know_wha.html

Que le bon temps roule a nouveau!

The response to Katrina was appalling on all levels. I mean, what do these urban planning types get paid to do? A major city in the gulf, situated below sea level with no forethought about worst possible scenario? And Bush, well what do you expect anyway. A few hours ago he's holding court at a press conference, trying to salve HIS wounds, all those nasty criticisms levelled by his acolytes across the man/boy divide (Bill O'Reilly/Tucker Carlson).
Besides the usual looters, psychos, troublemakers what did the federal goverenment think was going to happen when thousands of people, many poor, some sick and/or injured, without food or water for days, are herded together like common cattle? Did they expect reason to prevail? Rationality?

[sean]

I did it again.The above post is mine. Sorry.

[sean]

Sorry to clog up the space posting but you have to look at the Post today (Sat.)Cover photo: a "concerned" George Bush slumming with some poor guy in Biloxi, Miss. Inside: Happy (!) black folk cheering the arrival of the National Guard. You'd think someone's church charter bus had broken down. Next page: Bush hugging other distraught black folk. Additional garbage: Rich Lowry's notion that unwanted pregnancy, not the federal government's callousness, is the real "race" problem in evacuating the city. Pathetic really.

[Olympiada]

Well Chervokas, I found my way in here from Alternet. I like your writing except for one point. I would caution you on the use of 'christian radical'. Do you really know what one is? I am a Christian and I am a member of the Green Party. I am a Christian Radical. I am not, however, a American Protestant Fundamentalist or a right wing evangelical or televangelist, see the difference?
You are very public, and I do not want you to misinform or mislead people ok?

Otherwise keep up the good work.

BTW, who is Karl Rove?

And you are right, Bush needs to admit he is powerless and reach out for help, and accept guidance from others, and check his own morals.

But I do have to say the whole structure of the federal government seems faulty to me, to be honest.

[Fledermaus]

He never achieves his goals--how about capturing Osama bin Laden?

Actually he does achieve his goals, it's just that his goals are not what he says they are. He did invade Iraq to become the "War Preznit" he did immediatly secure the Oil Ministry as insurgents and terrorists looted weapon catches like Al Qua Qua.

He has cut taxes on wealth and capital gains, gave huge handouts to his buddies at KBR and Halliburton.

Finally he has accomplished his most important goal, getting re-elected. Everything has been done with that end in mind. All things the invastion, the gay bating, the talk of treason, tax cuts. Their entire purpose has been solely to get the president re-elected. When looked at from that angle every one of his policies has been a smashing success.

Of course now that he has been reelected there is nothing left for him to do. Quite simply nothing matters anymore. He can't run again, so now's the time to kick back and live a balanced life. He's done, nothing left to accomplish. Just spend the next 4 years doing favors for friends on the taxpayer's tab. Mark my words, his incompetence will kill more Americans in his remaining three years.

[chervokas]

Olympiada...I guess more accurate syntax would have been "radial Christians" or "Christianists" as I like to call them. Whether being a green make you radical, I don't know. I do know the political Christianity mov't seeks to change fundemental aspects of the Constitution to change the US from a secular country to a Christian one; and I know that members of the movement have committed acts of political terror like abortion clinic bombings. That's pretty radical.

Fledermaus, I agree with you, very strongly, that the Bush administration works by saying one thing and doing another and counting on people to register only the statement and the photo op, not the actions. But I don't agree that they obfuscated their real goals which they then achieve. They fail time and again even to mean their own low standards.

Certain the Bush administration wanted to catch Osama. They haven't. Certainly the Bush administration would haved like to be wrapping up the Iraq occupation now. They aren't. Certainly they would have liked to have avoided the death and drowning that followed Katrina. They didn't. The plans that FEMA had in effect were drawn up with the real intention of implementing them. They just didn't implement them through a combination of incompetence, indifference, and laziness.

[Olympiada]

Chervokas, nice to meet you. thank you for responding to my comment.

Thank you for using that word syntax. That is a relatively new word for me, and one that intrigues me.

I like your point of view, it intrigues me.

Well being a Green does make you radical because we have not gotten anybody in the White House yet, I do not think.

I would invite you to expand your understanding of the 'political Christianity' movement if you are interested. I have a link to a note on political theology by a modern Greek theologian if you are interested. Let me know, and I will put in a comment. I am quite sure the 'political Christianity' movement you are talking about does not represent me at all.

Bombings go against the very nature of Christianity. This is very disturbing to say the least. I am glad I have 'come out' as a Christian so I can fight these things. This is awful.