People in New Orleans owe the federal government a big stonking “thank you”
Why didn’t president George W. Bush push Staple’s Easy-button on Tuesday afternoon to fix the levees, pump the water out of town and get the jazz going again in the French Quarters by midnight? I mean, what kind of incompetent Rethuglikkkan Bushitler chimp is he? As everybody knows, it’s really easy to immediately rescue far more than 100,000 people from a flooded city.
Unless you’re Mayor Nagin, the cussin’ Cajun (except he’s not actually a Cajun) who found it useful to scream, on live radio, that the federal government should get off its ass and bail out the Mayor and the people he had failed so miserably.
No matter how many articles I read that say that the federal government should have been better prepared for what happened to New Orleans, I can’t help but think that, just maybe, New Orleans should have been better prepared. I mean, they did know their city is below sea level, right? They did know it’s been for decades the case that the levees aren’t built for a Category 4 Hurricane, right? And they did know the Gulf of Mexico generates a few more hurricanes than does, say, Massachusetts Bay, right?
Yet, when push came to shove, it was as if New Orleans had never known about its precarious situation. The police force disintregrated almost as quickly as the looting broke out, which was practically immediately after the levees broke. It’s the biggest commercial for personal gun ownership ever made.
It was maddening to watch all those people stranded in New Orleans, with little food, or water, or security, or, frankly, anything. The fact that president George W. Bush’s “first-response speech” was just as awful as the one he gave on 9/11 didn’t help. How could one not get the feeling that the federal machinery, that - sometimes, seemingly - vast anti-citizen conspiracy that happily devours billions of hard-earned dollars and eagerly micro-manages ever more of society, had gone AWOL?
I don’t really need the federal government to tell me how my local schools should be run, but, yes, it would be great if it could chip in when local law and order breaks down completely (on the other hand - 20 years of lawlessness along Rio Grande has yet to prompt a meaningful federal response, so maybe I’m just expecting way too much).
So there I was, on Wednesday and Thursday, watching television, checking websites, seeing and reading with my own lying eyes how New Orleans with the snap of a finger turned into a Third World city while various federal officials assured me that the situation was under control.
Now that aid is flowing into the city, and military forces are taking control of the streets, I think we can say with some confidence that the federal response would have been adequate if Louisiana and in particular New Orleans hadn’t failed so spectacularly.
And what about the Mayor’s buses? Some kid off the street figured out how to use them, why couldn’t the Mayor?
Blame Bush for Iraq, the government’s refusal to deal with illegal immigration, No Child Left Behind, and what not, but don’t blame him for the mess in New Orleans.
