Bombshell Katrina
Bombshell Katrina
Katrina has exposed critical systemic, strategic, and ideological fissures in our U.S. societal structure:
Although the issue of racial injustice is generally well understood by most thoughtful Americans, few of us knew that it could be so devastatingly deadly as we have seen in the last week or so. It was not the hurricane, the rupture of the levees, the early flooding or even the violence and looting of hoodlums. It was not a cynical disregard for the lives of the victims. It was the typical assumption that these were poor black and white people who were not a functioning part of the political system who would simply have to wait until the system got around to them. A sort of political cost benefit analysis had to be conducted first.
Despite all the scientific studies that precisely predicted the outcome, nobody –not even the victims themselves- thought it could be as bad as it was. This catastrophe caught everybody off guard. With all the finger-pointing notwithstanding, the real culprit has yet to be mentioned: Carl Rove. His political MO is all over this one: Take the energy out of the critics with fear tactics –WMD, Terrorists, Judicial Activism, Social Security. In each case, he miscalculated but without serious repercussion or penalty. In this case, sweat the State government and that rouge Mayor a while before acting. This miscalculation will prove the undoing of the Guru. The U.S. citizenry, though largely uninformed, don’t like to be seen as utter fools.
Black people can no longer afford the convenience of ignorance of the political system and the unmistakable reality of their unwitting nurturing of the violence-ridden subculture in their neighborhoods. The sprit of the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties needs, desperately, to be reinvigorated with a new emphasis on self-dependence. The current Federal Administration has turned this nation on its head and is shaking out the weak, the poor, the ignorant and the helpless to fend for itself.
Like our dead soldiers in Iraq, the dead New Orleanians, some floating in the filthy waters of the streets, have sent us a message: you are dealing with high-stakes political and ideological gamblers who hold a rich hand. Don’t allow our deaths to have been in vain.
Katrina has exposed critical systemic, strategic, and ideological fissures in our U.S. societal structure:
Although the issue of racial injustice is generally well understood by most thoughtful Americans, few of us knew that it could be so devastatingly deadly as we have seen in the last week or so. It was not the hurricane, the rupture of the levees, the early flooding or even the violence and looting of hoodlums. It was not a cynical disregard for the lives of the victims. It was the typical assumption that these were poor black and white people who were not a functioning part of the political system who would simply have to wait until the system got around to them. A sort of political cost benefit analysis had to be conducted first.
Despite all the scientific studies that precisely predicted the outcome, nobody –not even the victims themselves- thought it could be as bad as it was. This catastrophe caught everybody off guard. With all the finger-pointing notwithstanding, the real culprit has yet to be mentioned: Carl Rove. His political MO is all over this one: Take the energy out of the critics with fear tactics –WMD, Terrorists, Judicial Activism, Social Security. In each case, he miscalculated but without serious repercussion or penalty. In this case, sweat the State government and that rouge Mayor a while before acting. This miscalculation will prove the undoing of the Guru. The U.S. citizenry, though largely uninformed, don’t like to be seen as utter fools.
Black people can no longer afford the convenience of ignorance of the political system and the unmistakable reality of their unwitting nurturing of the violence-ridden subculture in their neighborhoods. The sprit of the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties needs, desperately, to be reinvigorated with a new emphasis on self-dependence. The current Federal Administration has turned this nation on its head and is shaking out the weak, the poor, the ignorant and the helpless to fend for itself.
Like our dead soldiers in Iraq, the dead New Orleanians, some floating in the filthy waters of the streets, have sent us a message: you are dealing with high-stakes political and ideological gamblers who hold a rich hand. Don’t allow our deaths to have been in vain.
posted by Shortypar | 9/05/2005 04:19:00 PM
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