POLITICS AND DESPAIR: The situation in New Orleans is unbelievable...it's becoming hard to watch on television. Looters now have guns and are firing on rescue helicopters, bands of armed gangs are raping women, people are dying in the streets, the Astrodome is full and it seems like the help Dubya keeps promising just isn't getting there fast enough. They need to send armed paratroopers in to stop the looting and start air-dropping more food and water. It's obvious the situation is overwhelming. There is no infrastructure, no communication and much of the city is in ruins. The relief effort from our government is not happening fast enough or aggressive enough. They keep talking about getting people out, but if troops would come and take control of the streets, some repair work could begin and people could stay in New Orleans in the dry areas. The politicians in Washington are slapping each other on the back about the great response, while Dubya grins and gives more bullshit "up with America" speeches. Fiddling while Rome burns comes to mind. Well, I guess it takes the attention away from Iraq for a few minutes.

Then you've got House Moron Dennis Hastert saying federal money shouldn't be used to rebuild New Orleans since it's in a flood zone. What a fucking idiot. I'm adding him to my list of assholes (which includes Dubya and Pat Robertson) who need to be loaded into a rocket and shot into the center of the sun.

Comments

David Herrle said…
This limp response is maddening, Collin. I agree. And the IMMEDIATE savagery down there is scary. Doesn't take long for lawlessness and the law of the jungle to reign.

(Since we're in PC Neo-Puritan hell these days, I need to specify that the jungle crack is meant as an eye-for-eye/pure survival/might makes "right" state of nature and nothing more.)

This is a harsh lesson to us all - a lesson that the thousands down there are experiencing painfully. The veneer is thin, thin, thin. Makes me shiver.

Thank goodness some reasonable folks down there have their own weapons and have fended off thugs. I know it's not a good situation generally, but it's another lesson: that sometimes individuals can at least have a chance at self-protection when the F-ing law enforcers are tripping over their own thumbs and folks are left low and NOT dry in a Third-World-looking erased city!

Bravo for private gun ownership - to protect the innocent from the cowardly devils who ruin it for everyone,I say.

It's the end of the week and these folks are STILL stranded, still filthy and thirsty and miserable! And the disease dangers, etc.

Sadly, I heard a victim crowing that their military meals weren't warm and they had to eat crackers. They're MREs, lady! That's the point: no need to cook.

THAT end needs tempered too, if folks are to endure. Selfishly worrying about the lack of steaming meals while you're at least getting what a LOT of others aren't is counterproductive.

I agree about the politicians. Pampered f**ks. Acting like this was a bad rainstorm.

Cripes.

Salvation Army is involved in aid now, folks. They're a decent org.
Anonymous said…
Can I rant for a minute? It's really scary down there -- amazing how quickly our delicate little social constructs can collapse. NOW they're sending 30,000 troops to try to get it under control -- does this have anything to do with the fact that most of the white people and/or people not living in poverty seem to have evacuated last weekend, and most of the desperate, dirty faces we're seeing on CNN are black? I hate to think so, but you have to wonder. I'm certainly getting some of this attitude from the red-state types in my family/circle of acquaintances (sample comment as young black man is lifted off a roof into a helicopter: "yeah, now drop him off downtown so he can do some looting"). The thing that scares me about that attitude (and reveals these "Patriots," many of whom are also "Christians," as major hypocrites) is that they totally discount this truth that we're all supposed to be holding as self-evident -- that all men are created equal? But a poor black woman with three little kids doesn't deserve our help because she was too lazy to go out and get a job? Whatever mistakes she may have made or weaknesses she may have, I truly believe that we owe it to her as fellow human beings to help at least get her and her kids somewhere dry and safe, maybe with a little food and water too. Anyone who thinks otherwise and still thinks of themselves as "Americans" or "Christians" can just kiss my atheist ass. OK, rant over.
David Herrle said…
The majority of Indonesian victims, etc., of the tsunami weren't white OR Christian, and they were helped mre immediately than the folks in New Orleans.

And anger at so-called Christians for not living up to their professed standards is admitting that those professed standards are worthy and should be adhered to as much as possible - hence validating true Christian tenets by decrying divergence FROM them.

Atheism is certainly no better when it comes to aiding distressed folks. ALL kinds of folks want to help and are helping (MANY religious orgs as well as secular). The matter is more general than belief or non-belief or even aggressive non-belief.

What's being shown here is bureaucratic folly and how folks should know that one emergency can hurl society into savagery.

No appeal to law makes any action valid - since no meaure is left to contrast/check any behavior. And,I might add, non-belief in transcendence about natural processes (acceptance that we're all basically results of blind chance anyway) squeezes out the significance of compassion, mercy, love, and non-racism IF followed to the logical conclusion.

Otherwise, we stay somewhat sane and kind by borrowing such lofty concepts and renaming them.

I think the black majority you see may be due to the preponderance of black civilians in that area - like the strange, inexplicable high number of Chinese-lookin' folks in CHINA. :)

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