The SHAME of a Nation

That is the theme of this New York Times article on how our Federal Government responded to this disaster. Both responsible Democrats AND it should be emphasized Republicans recognize that the theme as well as the practical nature of the Bush Administration's response are shameful.

But perhaps most of all there was shame, a deep collective national disbelief that the world's sole remaining superpower could not - or at least had not - responded faster and more forcefully to a disaster that had been among its own government's worst-case possibilities for years.

"It really makes us look very much like Bangladesh or Baghdad," said David Herbert Donald, the retired Harvard historian of the Civil War and a native Mississippian, who said that Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's destructive march from Atlanta to the sea paled by comparison. "I'm 84 years old. I've been around a long time, but I've never seen anything like this."

Donald is a great and venerable historian, when he says this it carries the weight of a thorough knowledge of American history.

The shame is compounded by the thuggish rationality of right-wingers like Limbaugh and O'Reilly gleefully making use of "looting" to selectively emphasize their own deep-seated racism. A bigotry near and dear...and not far beneath the surface of way too many people in this country. Being poor does not deprive you of citizenship. These are Americans in crisis -- and they have been treated like garbage, like untermenschen.

But by and large the feeling is shame. Shame that once again in this, the so-called "culture of life" some lives are more important than others. It is not just African-Americans that notice that while Bush can fly through the night from his ranch to sign the Terri Schiavo law for a single, hopeless case of a white woman; when tens of thousands of poor African-Americans are in peril, he goes off to giggle with a birthday cake, sell medicare to hand-picked overwhelmingly white retirees. They notice that well after the levees break he takes no notice or overt action and instead flies even further away from Washington, to San Diego to make an empty platitudinous speech.

While Bush was acting disturbingly detached (something we progressives have noted before but others haven't until now) the individuals ostensibly in charge or disaster relief, Chertoff and Brown have been an even larger disaster (one that does and should reflect on the man who appointed them). Time after time they have made idiotic statements that the overwhelming majority of those who stayed 'CHOSE' to stay in New Orleans -- as if there was a choice for them. Brown appears to be so woefully unqualified to head FEMA that he literally does nothing but interviews on television and radio -- and sadly, not very well. As CNN reported yesterday, both have been repeatedly caught fabricating the nature of what was happening on the ground and what was being provided, an unforgiveable pattern in a situation like this.

The stupifyingly cavalier action of Bush and his appointees compared to the immediacy in which he treated the Schiavo case are indefensible. We all know it, even his most strict adherents...hence the stupidity and viciousness of their defense.