Katrina
Let’s clear the air for a moment: President Bush did not cause Hurricane Katrina. President Bush did not cause global warming. President Bush did not cause the poverty-stricken people in New Orleans to be subjected to the horrific conditions that followed the hurricane’s destruction. President Bush did not create the institutionalized racism that has kept too many of our fellow black citizens in bleak conditions vaguely echoing slavery. President Bush did not cause the levees to break. President Bush is not to blame for Katrina, and any effort to make him the focus of our collective wrath after Katrina is misplacing a moment where meaningful insight could make real societal improvements in New Orleans and the surrounding areas possible.
Politics rarely captures us at our better moments, and the aftermath of the natural destruction of Katrina has been no exception. Predictably, political opportunists pitted against the President sought to point out his many inadequacies and the disjointed parts of his policy. Their complaints are not all inaccurate (the qualifications of the head of FEMA in a post-9/11 world being a particularly important insight into President Bush’s management technique). Predictably, religious leaders sought to provide solace by attempting to speak for “God’s will” as if they have insights into an ambiguous God’s unclear will. What is it we seek in the face of natural disaster? Unfortunately what we seek is to find someone who could have prevented the tragedy; someone who could have made the results less traumatic than they were. The time will come for reflection, but that reflection will be tainted if we can not separate politics from real change that is done for the right reasons. The glimmer of hope in America is always the courage its people show over the inane chatter of its leaders. In the days after Katrina when the level of destruction and displacement began to become clearer, it was the average American who stood up and gave of his money, his groceries and even his blood.
What are we to do with the aftermath of Katrina? Nothing more simple and yet more complicated than to look candidly at what the storm waters revealed about parts of our country most of us can afford to overlook. We must seek to improve on that which caused this destruction and we must take the opportunity this tragedy affords to look at the razor’s edge too many families live precariously balanced on. More than anything else, Katrina fixated us to our televisions, watching poor inner city families dislocated from their homes, sent to the highest point of ground in the area with appropriate shelter, and left. I will never forget the CBS news crew who, while filming a scene while floating in a boat, panned the camera to show a frail black man in a wet hospital gown laying prone on his back floating on a discarded wooden door. He could not speak and was too frail to get into the boat without assistance. We will never know his story, and what matters is to let the anger and empathy flow deeply into our very beings, and to force ourselves to seek out those leaders who propose real answers both in how to prevent such a disaster from happening again, but much more importantly, how to prevent our society from further dislocating the disadvantaged, and bring them into a meaningful part of our society.
How deeply insincere of the political pundits who attacked those left behind for their baser instincts coming to the forefront when their very lives and any sense of securty had been violated by Katrina! What would you expect of yourself if you had been displaced, realized you had probably lost all you owned in the world, may have lost loved ones, were looking at an uncertain future in terms of the most basic questions of sustenance and home? On what emotional precipice would you find yourself if you spent days in a stinking abyss with no where to lay your head, little or no food or water, and access only to befouled bathrooms unbecoming for even an animal? Feel these peoples’ pain, and realize for most of them, it has only just begun. What you and I see on the media and can afford to overlook will be a reality that will stay with these families for years to come.
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next post: The Federal Political Dimension to Katrina
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About MysteriousFaith
“If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.”
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