A Shaken South

Watching the tragedy that is New Orleans and the other hurricane-ravaged areas of the US, it makes one aware of how used we are in North America to assuming these things only happen in far away places, like Indonesia or Africa. Not at home. We're too developed for these things.

We all know that we tend to live one pay cheque away from destitution. We count on our credit cards to get us through. Those of us who own homes think we have some equity tied up in them. But in the face of such catastrophic destruction, what do we have? Nothing. Those people in New Orleans, what do they do now? The amount of reconstruction that will have to be done to that city is unimaginable. It's not a swath of city that has been decimated. It's not a case of bringing in the bulldozers, clearing, and rebuilding. The sheer amount of work that will have to be done in New Orleans to get it into the place where the bulldozers can begin is beyond imagination.

And even those who thought that they were "comfortable" before the disaster... now, no home, no job, and with the vast amount of displacement that has to take place, how long will it be before they even can begin to untangle the mess their lives have become? Do they still have credit? Where does VISA send the bill? Are the users of the credit cards legitimate? I have always assumed that if I had to be evacuated, I could use my credit cards and carry on. With New Orleans underwater, how has that affected the economy of the state, and the nation? Banks, businesses, organizations that collect and hold financial information - identities submerged. Good luck with sorting out that mess.

Welcome to Europe after WWII. My biggest fear for the Americans is that while they do death and destruction well (ie the response to 9/11 and cleaning up the mess), how will they manage displacement on this scale? Where do the kids go to school? Where do the corpses go for burial? How does an otherwise perfectly healthy, although profoundly shocked, individual, pick up the pieces when it will be months before any real rebuilding can begin - much less the displaced poor. Where are they going to go, and whose city is ready to pick up the costs for the transplanted indigent?

Dubya was able to direct the nation's shock and anger after 9/11 at a foreign scapegoat. "Let's bomb the #%%-holes who did this!" Yet his government, (and Clinton's before) had ignored the information that told them that people were taking flying lessons, that there was the potential for mass destruction. His government cut the funding that was reinforcing the levees. His government has funnelled billions into an engagement half a world away. As all those people wait and wait and die waiting to be rescued, he takes on the role of "comforter in chief". Give me a break. I want to see him direct the people's anger at the cause of this disaster. Cm'on Bushie - declare war on God.