I have a cunning plan. There has to be at least one person in the Bush Administration, one advisor who has Bush’s ear, who still has a heart and a soul. Just one…I’m neither naive nor greedy.
That person, the key to the whole cunning plan, would advise Bush that (contrary to previous reports) there are actually rich, white, conservative, religious, Republicans trapped in New Orleans. Shock! Horror! Mobilise the Army, the National Guard! Let’s get those people out of there, let’s get the power back on and start dropping supplies! Hey, Bush wouldn’t know any different – he flew over the stricken area in Air Force One, for gods sake, what would he know?
You know it would happen. And that is a terrible commentary on America, on the Bush administration, and on all of the American citizens who voted that grinning, venal chimp back into office. I would make a snarky comment about reaping what you’ve sown, except that statistically it’s not poor blacks who are conservative Republican voters, so they’re reaping the consequences of what others have sown.
As I read the blogs and the news stories, I struggle to keep my eyes from filling with tears. It’s an obscenity, a horror. There is no reason for the lack of support in this area. Except greed, except a hidden agenda to clear away some of those bothersome have-nots that didn’t vote for you anyway, except wickedness and evil.
And the looting? To be expected, in such poor areas. New Orleans normally has an extremely high crime rate; it’s one of the reasons I never moved there, even though I love the city. Take the rules and law enforcement away that normally makes people play by the rules, and of COURSE you will have anarchy. Are you naive enough to think that the criminals both petty and major who contribute to that high crime rate are NOT going to take advantage of this? Of course not. But most people aren’t like that…they’re just trying to survive, and keep their families alive. Would I loot a grocery store? you betcha. Would I grab a diamond necklace lying on the floor of a looted store? Maybe…probably. How about you?
Learn from this, America.
This post from the Daily Kos said it so much better than I ever could.
“…They would move heaven and earth to save the life of one White Woman in Florida to combat the very idea of euthanasia (which technically it was not). A woman that a decade earlier had lost her ability to so much as ask for help, much less have coherent thoughts about the quality of her own life.
And they would sit on their ass and watch as tens of thousands of poor men, women, children, babies, and elderly bake in the New Orleans heat surrounded by water, sewage, gasoline and an abandoned city, now devoid of anyone with the means to have escaped ahead of the storm.
This is the culture of life. The culture of life wants to save brain dead white women and unborn children. The culture of life wants you to watch endless non-news about the disappearance of one white teenager in Aruba. The culture of life wants you to support your nation as it kills tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in its Quixotic quest against a non-threat. The culture of life wants a zero-tolerance for looters policy to sound authoritative as babies die of dehydration. The culture of life expects you to take care of yourself, and if you can’t, then it is your own fault for getting into that situation in the first place. Fuck off. You had your shot. Station in life, where you hang your hat, and whether you have the $40 at the end of the month to pay for the overpriced gasoline to get out of that home in time is all up to you.”
Yes, the whole system seems rather hypocritical doesn’t it…
Sadly, you hit the nail on the head with your cunning plan. I’ve not a native here, but I consider myself American while I live here, and it’s shameful to see this latest in a series of shameful episodes.