Suddenly ...
9/06/2005
Everybody's an expert on hurricanes, disaster relief, bureacracy and what to do with the City of New Orleans. Aren't you?
The world around me has become a surreal tapestry of ignoramus egos vying for a personal slice of the blabbermouth pie. At worst, the jabbering and shameless opining of nearly everyone has sunk to new lows of extreme human callousness and/or sheer posturing - and not to infrequently, bold-faced racism. I'm especially disturbed by the unthinking crowd who bark about how we should abandon the city and build elsewhere. Here are a few other common 'opinions' I've been hearing of late:
"It was the State's fault."
"They shouldn't have built the city there..."
"They shouldn't have (this or that)."
"That's what those sinful heathens deserve."
"That's what those mostly overweight black folks deserve."
"Mostly gangland anyway. Let the locals deal with it."
"It's a shame things have to escalate to violence. Good white folk wouldn't do [this or that]."
"The hubbub is just a bunch of kneejerk lefties digging for another reason to end the war."
"Stop politicizing the disaster. Support our president."
(etc. etc.)
Let's see what they say when the disaster moves to THEIR town and those over-inflated dumbfucks in D.C. sit on their asses for three days straight.
Of course, I'm focusing on the negative. And by opining, I've probably just added myself to the list of people who are pissing me off right now. Nothing new, I suppose. Everyone's entitled to their different hats, and self-loathing comes with the burden of being human - to a degree. I suppose by pointing out this wretchedness of humanity, I'm also not really helping to improve the state of things. But fortunately, I view journaling as a method for exploring ideas and exercising demons, not changing the fucking world.
And I'm certain if I look a little harder, inspiration can be found amid the chaos. But right now I'm feeling contempt for the race that calls itself 'human' to such a degree that it's nearly drowning out my sensibilities. Once that's over, I'm sure there will be plenty of glorious revelations about the heroic nature of human beings, the power of human kindness against all odds - yadda yadda. And eventually I'll reach another plateau of transcendant human awareness and forgive the human race yet one more time.
It just fucking sucks when 'all odds' includes uncaring, unthinking talking heads, lying politicians, spin doctors, irritating AM hatemongers, stupid racist fucks and carpetbaggers galore. All sitting in grand comfort behind their television sets, sipping on their beverage of choice in their clean, dry clothes, with their clean, white babies bouncing up and down on their big white knees.
I've been through two hurricanes myself, though they were fairly minor and we were far enough away from the coastline in Ladson, S.C. to avoid most of the strong winds. And on the flipside, in the many years I've lived in the Midwest, I've never actually SEEN a tornado (though I did watch a funnel cloud form right above my head once). Never felt an earthquake. Never lived in a house that burned down (though our Westville home burnt to the ground AFTER we left it). So I've been pretty lucky. I don't pretend to be the authority on what to do with NO after the disaster, and I can't pretend to know what most of those people are going through, though it horrifies me to see so much suffering going on.
I cannot claim to know what the citizens of the gulf are feeling. I'm not there. What I am experiencing is television fantasy, as are most people. We can all feel and share the pain that we see, but we can't all be experts. People can keep 'trying on' different opinions until the cows come home. But nothing is a good substitute for the raw, bleeding truth laid bare before the world, and only those who are experiencing post-Katrina can tell it like it is.
One thing's for certain. I will believe a screaming, crying, grieving mother in the flooded streets of NO - damning the fetid stench of political laziness and begging for help with every painful breath - far more quickly than I will believe yet another "Mission Accomplished" from everyone's beloved piece-of-shit president and his good-ol-boy network of supporters.
posted by Edward Svengali @ Tuesday, September 06, 2005,
