(Not Really Another) Rant 128: New Orleans; Some Blurbs
"It's a national disgrace...We send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."
-Louisiana Homeland Security Director
Watching Ted Koppel ream Michael Brown, FEMA director, about what seems to have been a major fumble in helping New Orleans' survivors gave me some sense of justice tonight. Hopefully the man takes the medicine he received tonight and gets his people to get their fingers out of their asses. Either the disaster is so great and widespread that no one could have ever gotten shit together fast enough, or the government fumbled, or a mix of the two. Regardless, I am sure that some officials are kicking themselves over the ABC nightly news reaming that tonight's broadcast was. (It was one of the best news broadcasts I have ever seen.) There was actually one lady in a video clip who said something like "The officials are on television crying. But look around you here. Where is the help?" They cynically played clips of GW's speech as if to drive the point home that the man clearly has no concern since his sights are still focused spending all sorts of money and human lives on slapping Iraq around.
President Bush said that no one could have known that the levees would break. That's funny, considering that once Katrina started heading for New Orleans a lot of knowledgeable folks were saying the levees could break. (It's also what many scientists and officials in Louisiana have been saying for years. The federal government has been lowering the budget for the local Army Corp of Engineers for the levee maintenance for the past several years. Recently levee improvements were not seen as important.) Hearing the President's inane speech "strategery" in which he says all the right things about "help and supplies" getting to New Orleans and all that crap, I think of the Billion dollar a day War in Iraq. Fuck Iraq. When was the last time Senior Bush had to push bodies out of the way to extract survivors? When was the last time El Presidente couldn't escape from harm's way because he was too poor to leave?
Betcha all those national guard units and the First Army division are more intent on securing the property and icons of power than they are with helping the thousands of people still trapped in the city starving and dying. I hope I am proven wrong. Perhaps I am too cynical. Perhaps the soldiers are really out there giving supplies to people and rescuing those in danger. Human nature being what it is, it is likely. As I recount the video clips of people looting, most of them seemed to be going for food and essentials. I wonder about the fucktards who were carrying off TV sets and appliances. Where the fuck are they going to plug that shit in or sell it? Way to go. While many people are foraging for supplies, some idiots are struggling through floodwaters carrying some TVs they just looted. I wonder if they'll get so hungry, they'll eat the damned things. Sometimes, human stupidity is surprising.
Throughout all of this, I am sure that there are people up here in Chicago (which owes much of its cultural and social existence to places like New Orleans) who are thinking along the dumb lines of "Damn. No more Mardi Gras." Well, fuck it. What I know of the people of New Orleans is that they savor every last ounce of joy they can get in this life. Unlike the people of Chicago, who tend towards a more neurotic and fragmentary enjoyment of life. You better believe there'll be another Mardi Gras. It's not done just for stuck up and stuck in Northerners. The next Mardi Gras will be a bang up that will send a message loud and clear. I don't see people from New Orleans as the sort that would say, "Okay. Fuck it. We'll just be sad and hang our heads low forever." Otherwise why should I even play my damned trumpet ever again?
I see that some extreme Islamists are gloating over Katrina's destruction of New Orleans, saying it's God's punishment. Yeah? Well, then what about the self-imposed riot on that Iraqi bridge where Muslims killed almost a thousand of their own people? Was that also God's will? Inshallah, motherfuckers. Think about that the next time you gloat over the fact that the US government cut back funding on levee repairs and updates...because they only did it just to bomb and terrorize you. Nice going, idiots.
Would aid have gotten to New Orleans a lot sooner if it's population was less poor and more white? Perhaps I am being cynical again, but it's just a response to what I have seen and heard from second hand sources.
On a personal note: As of tonight (the time of this writing), I only have one person I know in Louisiana left to worry about. The rest have been accounted for either directly or via second hand sources. All is not right in the world. But there is some silver lining on those clouds. I don't think it will be balanced out for a long time. But for all of you hyenas who love to preach disorder and destruction, I bet you are gloating now like the vampires you are. You don't know how lucky you have it.
New Orleans will rise again, probably most of it leveled and rebuilt. I'll get more beads and laugh at the women who show off their boobies. And I will go and play my horn to pay respects to all those saints who didn't make it through this time. We'll see each other again and we'll play till our hearts' content.
We got caught up in the past few years worried about all the sick and twisted shit that human beings can do to one another (in this age of War on (some) Terrorists). We forgot about Nature. And now, when one city has been virtually destroyed and drowned, it wasn't because of some fucktards who like to crash planes into shit...it wasn't some fucktards with a religious agenda (though I am sure many of those are active in claiming this as God's punishment)...it was Nature. The lesson: life is full of enough suffering. Why the fuck do people insist on creating so much more of it?
You can ask yourself if any of the gods exist, why do they let shit like this happen. Or why do they cause this shit. But that is not the function of any god anywhere. And asking the questions like this are futile. Can you give a moment of quiet for those who didn't quite make it, for those who are trying to make it, and to thank your lucky stars that you are comfortable enough to read this right now? Then after that moment, dance your ass off.
Watching the massive hemorrhage of New Orleans is disheartening. But life is sweet with the suffering, rolling with the punches. I am realizing just how lucky some of us really are.
Fuck it. What do I know?
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
September 1st, 2005
Addendum: Morning/Sept. 2
Watching the footage from the Convention Center makes me want to throw bricks through some bank windows. It is four days since Katrina hit, and the fact that food, medicine, or even other help has yet to be sent to the thousands stranded there (some of them dying) is not surprising but still saddening. What? They can send in thousands of soldiers to New Orleans, but they can't seem to be able to truck or fly in necessities to the refugees. I wonder. If the disaster was in Las Vegas and threatened white people, would the humanitarian response be so lack luster?
Every day it seems to get worse.
How many good samaritans will be arrested for looting? It appears that some people are practicing the ancient art of "not waiting for the officials" and are going around to the stores to take supplies to bring back to stranded people.
Then there are people beating and raping others. Those cletii deserve a Darwin award. I wonder if there are any marksmen in the police or the military that will do anything about that? Or are they still focused on defending what's left of commercial property? Wasn't it Wednesday that the entire New Orleans police force was taken off of search and rescue duty in order to go after looters. "Looters" indeed. Yesterday, there were photos circulating which showed blacks and white appropriating goods. The captions of the black people said "looters." The captions of the white people said something like "taking needed supplies."
Even GW was on this morning talking about how the response and relief effort has fumbled. Even if his thick head was able to admit that, you know it must be really and truly bad. The city of the Saints is dying and we truly do not need any more dead saints.