The Real Looters

[Plaid Adder]

Liza and I were talking about why it is that Katrina didn't seem to be affecting us emotionally as much as 9/11 had. I said, I think it's because we've stopped watching television. Which is true; since the 2004 election, we haven't had the thing on. We have stopped listening to NPR in the morning, too. Reading about the news on the internet actually keeps you better informed, but in terms of grasping the scale and the human cost, etc., I figured it would help to see it. So last night we turned on the TV.

Holy shit.

It's one thing not to be able to get to all the people who are stranded on their rooftops. It's another thing entirely not to be able to get to the people who are at the designated evacuation points, and it's yet a whole different order of fuckupitude not to be able to evacuate the hospitals. After all, everyone knows where they are. And if the *media* can get in there to film this stuff, where the hell is the federal government?

This morning I heard some flunky talking about how the federal relief effort is "gearing up." A week after the hurricane you knew was coming. That's nice. Bush is now saying that OK, well, perhaps the response was inadequate, but THAT'S ALL GOING TO CHANGE! STARTING RIGHT NOW! WE'RE TURNING THE CORNER!

Yeah. In Baghdad, if anyone has power and can get CNN, they must be laughing fit to rupture organs.

"Freedom is untidy," said Rumsfeld, when the looting started in Baghdad. Well, we're now finding out just how untidy it is when a major city is liberated from electric power, food, water, plumbing, shelter, infrastructure, and the rule of law.

A hurricane is a hurricane. Nothing anyone could do about how big Katrina was or how hard it hit--nothing the time, anyway, no matter what you may believe about this as a function of climate change. But what happens afterwards, that's the government's job. And so far...well, Jesus Christ, turn on the TV.

Way back in the day before we knew we were facing another 4 years of this regime, I wrote a column called "Can't Buy Me Love" in which I talked about why government corruption really matters. It isn't JUST because it's wrong and unjust. It's because corrupt governments don't function. If you have people at the top who are more worried about lining their own pockets than about doing their jobs, then they cannot get *anything* done, even something as basic as taking out the trash. And that's exactly what we're seeing here.

Why is the rescue effort this slow, late, chaotic, and insufficient? Because nobody at the top cared about getting ready for something like this. It wasn't going to help them any. What political hay could W. have made out of strengthening FEMA? Who cared? If it didn't have something to do with the war on terror, abortion, same-sex marriage, or tax cuts, his base wasn't interested, and neither was he. Their whole approach to the domestic machinery of government has been to loot what they can get out of it and leave it to rot. You see it at every level from Bush's patronage-system appointments, made without a thought in the world about who's actually qualified to do the actual job, to the policies they ram through Congress, in which 'reform' is a code word for 'destroy.' For five years they have been ransacking the domestic government to feed their war in Iraq and their jihad on federal taxation, without giving a shit about what it would do to the country.

Well, George, now you've lost New Orleans. You happy now? Or are you going to destroy a couple more cities before you step down?

I've been reading stuff from my international friends about how outrageous it was that there was no organized effort to evacuate the poor, the sick, the elderly, and so on, before the hurricane hit, that it was all left up to the individual people to pile into their cars (those that had them) and get out. Well, that's Bush's America, folks; if you can't pay for your own rescue, then fuck you. Why should my tax money pay for someone else's grandmother to be airlifted to where she can get her dialysis treatments? That money is MINE, dammit! It should only pay for MY STUFF!

It's insane. This is an insane way to live, and now it's becoming an insane way to die.

Last night I watched Bush talk about how there should be zero tolerance for lawlessness in a situation such as this. You know, what, asshole, if there had been zero tolerance for lawlessness in Washington for the past 5 years, you would be in prison, and we'd have a real fucking government. You guys are the real looters. And I hope that sooner or later, the rest of this country figures that out.

Jesus wept,

The Plaid Adder