Reap The Whirlwind

"When men sow the wind it is rational to expect that they will reap the whirlwind"

-Frederick Douglas

With the horrors of Hurricane Katrina on full display for the entire world to see the true horror is that which floats just beneath the surface: that the Bush administration has lost the moral authority to govern, at least to those who did not realize that it was already long gone. The idiot king was pickin’ away on a git’ar at yet another meticulously stage managed public relations appearance at a San Diego naval base where he was busy fraudulently comparing Iraq to WW II. The king turned minstrel while the city of New Orleans faced the wrath of nature as well as the ensuing collapse of a levee system that had seen federal assistance cut over the course of the administration and the reign of terror of the DeLay-Frist-Lott congressional wrecking crew. The money that was desperately needed to shore up the city’s last line of defense against raging floods that could, and now would destroy it were sacrificed on the alter of tax cuts for the richest of Americans, the failure of multi-national corporations unwilling to shoulder their fair share of the tax burden despite their use of the infrastructure that they utilize for profit at taxpayer expense, the war in Iraq and the depletion of the domestic tax base due to outsourced jobs. FEMA has been slowly stripped of the ability to respond to domestic disasters as it is swallowed whole by the all- encompassing wet dream of the surveillance society/police state: the mammoth Department of Homeland Security. The king strummed while the Big Easy drowned, this is the man who ran for reelection on the promise that he was the only one capable of providing strong leadership and defending against terrorist attacks while maintaining domestic order, a sales pitch that is as phony as his brand moniker of compassionate conservatism which is just another two letter word like bull shit.

Despite dodging the worst impact of the monster storm that wiped out the Mississippi coastline with mind boggling force, the images that I saw were beyond comparison with anything other than pictures that I have seen of Hiroshima shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped sixty years ago, New Orleans was doomed anyway. Katrina's pure primal savagery laid waste to the Mississippi town of Waveland which was completely demolished, Gulfport was also mostly gone, only devastation, ruins and bloated bodies left in place of the buildings and lavish homes that were once there. The gambling resort laden coastal city of Biloxi was pulverized, every riverboat casino was either destroyed or severely damaged. Former Senate Majority Leader and Jesse Helms acolyte Trent Lott’s home was destroyed although he himself was tragically not inside at the time. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, the former head of the Republican National Committee and former oil industry lackey lobbyist who in a caustic piece of irony was a key force in quashing U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol got to see firsthand what the effects of global warming are capable of through producing ever more powerful and destructive storms as the coastal areas of his state were annihilated by the vengeful bitch Katrina.

The worst-case scenario happened in New Orleans, the levees began to give way after years of being shorted of funding, money that the locals were begging for: an additional 71.2 million had just been hacked from the Corps of Engineers 2006 budget. The deterioration of the levee system was responsible for allowing torrents of water to flow unimpeded into the bowl in which the city has long sat as a catastrophe waiting to happen. As waters rapidly rose, those who believed that they had been lucky enough to escape from the full fury of the storm were suddenly trapped in their homes which were slowly engulfed by Lake Ponchartrain and the Mississippi River, being forced into their attics or roofs to await rescue or trapped to drown in their living rooms and bedrooms, the body count will have to wait until the city is pumped out in several months. The downtown area itself was largely spared from the biblical flood but tens of thousands of the city’s poorest residents who were unable to evacuate were driven to the Superdome and the Convention Center for shelter. It is the scenes of these unfortunate people and their horrifying predicament that are the most disturbing of all as well as the most graphic example of how badly that the Bush administration and government failed the people that it was at one time, prior to the rise of corporatism, created to serve and protect.

In one of the most shameful episodes in American history those stranded in downtown New Orleans without food, water, protection, medical assistance or even the most basic of human services were neglected by the government for four days as they begged for help. They were trapped in unimaginable squalor, amongst marauding thugs who were free to run rampant, raping, beating and looting, preying on the most vulnerable of the helpless poor, sick and elderly who were unable to make it out before the great flood, their despair and desperation mounting by the hour. In addition to being trapped in an existential Hell the victims of governmental neglect had one thing in common, they were overwhelmingly black. “We are out here like pure animals” stated the Reverend Issac Clark as he stood amidst the filth and dead bodies at the New Orleans Convention Center, the wailing of the suffering was audible, babies cried, people prayed in vain for help. The Superdome was stifling, its air filled with the stench of vomit, excrement and fear, there was no air conditioning, there was mayhem. In the flooded areas bloated bodies were borne by stagnant and toxic waters, filled with snakes, debris and disease. There was devastation everywhere, it is impossible to believe that this is happening in America, it resembled a third world country, this is our national disgrace.

Painful truths about this country are being exposed, the specter of racism is once again rearing its ugly head, do you honestly believe that these people wouldn’t have been treated differently if they were white? The poverty rate in Orleans Parish is a staggering 27.9 percent, mostly black, the national poverty rate is 12.7 percent, nearly thirteen of every one hundred Americans live in abject poverty per the latest study which like all studies in the age of radical Republicanism and the Bush junta are subject to being skewed, the actual numbers are probably much higher. The poverty statistics also don’t include the working poor, those Americans who are just barely getting by and are one event of bad luck away from losing what little that they have and joining the ’12.7’ percenters. There may be no statistics available on the number of the working poor but with skyrocketing oil and gasoline prices, the gross indebtedness of the besieged middle class, inevitable rises in insurance rates, spiraling health care costs and the fact that any and all rises in energy costs eventually are passed on to the consumer there will soon be even more descending into poverty. How does this happen in a wealthy and technologically advanced society?

Racism and class division are specialties of the current crop of neo conservative post Reagan Republicans. They regularly use divisive tactics thinly cloaked in the language of bigotry and fear that manages to push all of the right buttons for their base, they are masters at this art. I personally know people whose cult like devotion to the party is based on their longtime loathing for blacks whom they use as scapegoats for every evil and perceived problem with society since the sixties. They decry the welfare state and social programs, ranting on at length about the indignity of having to pay taxes to subsidize what they have been brainwashed into believing is laziness or those seeking to abuse the system for free handouts. They are never able to make the connection that it is corporate welfare and the revamping of the tax system to allow for the wealthy to escape paying their fair share that are the true culprits for their own declining living standards, it is always easier to seize on an easy target than to bother to think things through and reach the inevitable conclusion that the entire unregulated free market economic system is rotten and irredeemably corrupt. Those who were drawn to the GOP by the siren song of racism had to have been delighted to watch so many poor blacks left to fend for themselves in the streets of the Crescent City this week, with the threat of imminent violence as thick as the bayou humidity hanging like a pall over the city, it would have made for the ultimate in reality television. What is now being exposed is that The Republicans care about as much about saving black Americans as they do about the blacks being slaughtered in Africa by genocidal regimes far more vile than the one that the treasury has been looted to dispose with in Iraq.

The country is on a very dangerous downward spiral into uncharted territory and whether it emerges intact all depends on whether or not people are finally able to break free from the real life Truman Show that is the Bush administration's Potemkin nation, choreographed masterfully by image masters and party hacks but beneath the shiny, star spangled veneer there exist dark and revolting truths that peer into the very abyss of the American soul. Given the economic impact and ripple effect of this past weeks events on energy prices and the resulting shortages caused by a public that has for far too long been force fed a steady diet of fear and dread by the media, a public that panics and hordes gasoline and other staples depriving others of adequate supplies. The exposure of the very real racial and class problems that the last few days have driven home are certain to stir the boiling pot of resentment and hate that already exists in this most angry and divided of countries, who knows when it will ultimately reach the boiling point and what the repercussions will be but it will be likely be extremely cruel and brutal. The anarchy in the streets of New Orleans is a sight that Americans had better get used to, with the coming economic meltdown triggered by years of rampant free market greed, of capitalism cannibalizing itself through a massive redistribution of wealth, through the elimination of jobs, the monopolization of industry and the unwillingness of the federal government to act in a regulatory capacity is going to make rioting a common scene as the poor and desperate take to the streets. There are still three months left in hurricane season, what if another major city is destroyed? What if it is Miami, Tampa or worst of all Houston with it’s oil infrastructure? What will happen then?

Meanwhile, there is death, suffering and pestilence, it sickens me as an American to watch this, and the inability of this clusterfuck administration to deal with the situation is abhorrently lacking and devoid of even the most basic levels of human decency and compassion. George W.Bush has now had both the biggest terrorist attack as well as the most devastating natural disaster in U.S. history occur on HIS watch, will he hit the trifecta with global thermonuclear war?

What the fuck?

And despite Karl Rove’s likely delight at an event that would knock Iraq, Cindy Sheehan and Valerie Plame completely out of the news, the coverage of the suffering and trapped victims has replaced it and stoked public hostility. They can hide the truth about Iraq, but they can’t hide this. It is time for the people to realize the nature of the charlatans who have dragged this country to the very brink, and to respond appropriately by finally holding this administration accountable for something. Pay heed to the fact that while New Orleans was suffering and people were dying, Karl Rove celebrated the departure of Sheehan’s war protest camp from Chickenhawk Ranch in Crawford by slithering down the road to the organized group of extremist right wing counter protestors in order to shake hands and slap the good ole boys on the back for circling the wagons. I am curious as to whether Rove is experiencing similar glee today as world outrage continues to mount over New Orleans, this is something that Turd Blossom hadn’t bargained for. Unlike Iraq there are no imbedded journalists, no media filters, no public relations flacks that will be able to spin this….it affects too many people for that and the images are far too ugly. My wife says that maybe this is what will finally bring these bastards down, personally I don’t have that much faith in T.V. Nation but with any luck it just may be the spark that it takes to ignite those who are incensed by this nightmarish immersion of democracy in a pool of shit as well as to provide a much needed wakeup call to a slumbering populace. This is the time to put one hell of a dent into the neo conservative plans of empire, theocracy and totalitarian reign and trigger a beginning of the end to this most contemptible of periods in U.S. history, perhaps it will even mark the beginning of the end of reactionary one party rule and the diminishment in the power of their corporate masters.

The mostly disorganized attempts by the administration to engage in damage control may be a sign that they too realize that this could finally be the event that snaps America out of the irrational trance that it has been in since that awful Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001. The worst sign for the right wing movement in general and the Bush administration in particular is that the wreckage left by Hurricane Katrina has knocked the wall to wall coverage of missing teenager Natalee Holloway out of the non FOX news.

Could it finally be time for the Bush administration to reap the whirlwind?