Daily Kos Again ...

i used to dislike the daily kos. now, it has grown so big so fast that there's always something there of interest to me. most of those diaries don't actually make it on the recommend list. i almost never read the front page posts. i was really pissed off after the pie fight, but i decided to stick around anyway because of the variety it offers in the quieter, less noticed parts of the kos crowd.

this diary, given its title, was destined to hit the rec list. i thought for a moment that it was actually going to be an explanation for why hatred towards bush was unjustified. that's why i read it anyway. but, it was an ironic title and the poster proceeded to rebut an editorial that made the argument specified in the title of the diary. i should have known. there is now an entrenched practice at kos of using titles like that -- ones that go against the grain of popular kos opinion and therefore inflame people -- to get lots of kossacks to read it.

usually, i'm annoyed at falling for it, but this time, i'm glad i did.

"Every person who brags about their tip-top moral compass always seems to have countless people standing behind them looking for something to eat. Why is that?"

i think her assertion is overly-broad. there are also a lot of poor people who are judgmental of other poor people. however, there's a grain of truth in her statement. contempt towards the poor is not a new development. dickens expounded upon it for thousands of pages, documenting the savage conditions facing the poor during the industrial revolution. although there are frequent admonishments against mistreating the poor in most moral and ethical codes, the reason they're there is because people typically treat the poor badly.

yet, somehow, like this woman, i am still astonished and horrified by the continuing callousness towards the poor. the destruction of new orleans has constantly been on my mind for the last two weeks. i'm trying not to crystallize this event with a single pithy statement that rests on an unprovable assertion, or a truism that demands a fundamental change in human nature to answer the outrage implied in it.

i am disturbed by the transformation of the dialogue around this disaster. at first, there was a loss of artifice, but that's all gone now. everyone is at each other's throats all over again, drawing their lines in the sand based on the accused's political affiliation. for a moment, nagin was a hero in the liberal blogosphere, but he is now a fallen angel because he made a public reconciliation with bush. i haven't checked the conservatives' take on things, so i don't know how they're treating nagin now. he was really unpopular with a lot of them at first. there have been claims that this disaster is a failure of conservative or libertarian government.

i've even read discussions where people actually say shit like, "i'll blame bush as long as you're willing to blame the state and local democrats some too!" the liberal response often consists of a pithy reference to norquists' stated desire to drown government in the bathtub. the tinfoil hatters are saying the levees were blown up in order to kill the black poor of new orleans in order to steal their property for rich white developers. i suppose they think that rich white developers relish the idea of taking over sewage-soaked new orleans and the carpet of corpses left behind. not to mention the deadly mix of oil and chemicals soaking in the ground there.

yeah, mmmmmmm. tasty.

i've wanted to scream at people that they can't play political horse-trading with this. the gretna sheriff who shot at people trying to flee the disaster in new orleans is a democrat. hell, nagin recently switched parties. this whole thing is a perverted Shakespearean farce masquerading as a tragedy. geraldo, who 'rescued' a woman twice because the first take wasn't good enough, got real. or rather, he acted the camera whore he always was, but somehow it got to some people. oprah did a two-part new orleans series. but, already, the focus on the victims is fading. the devastation of hurricane katrina is now another battleground in the socially poisonous culture war. it's as if trolls have taken over the national dialogue.

i hate these republicans vs. democrats narratives. they're so pointless. this wasn't a failure of republican government or democratic government. it was a failure of incompetent government. the neglect of the environment, the levees, the lack of concern for the low mobility poor, sick, old, and disabled -- all of that is a multi-generational responsibility. the racism and the ugly bias is part of the society in which we live, and i do think it influenced the systemic, endemic indifference to the needs of new orleans' poor. that exists in both the local and national governments and in every community across the country.

politicians are funny with money. they have all kinds of things they want to spend it on, but never enough to pay for everything they want. neither are opportunistic politicians a new development. they exist among the republicans and democrats, and members from both parties found reasons to divert resources to other things. politicians who give away jobs as political rewards are all over the pages of history. the disaster in new orleans was a failure of government, period.

there was a complete lack of coordination between local, federal, and private resources. that's everybody's fault. i am going to say that i find george bush's attitude towards FEMA disturbing. given the nature of the promises FEMA made to the states, he really ought to have nominated some qualified people. congress ought to be more discriminating about the appointments they approve. i do feel that there was a vacuum of national leadership. i think racism and classism played a role, historical and present in this tragedy. the absence of a means to protect the lives of those did not have the resources to flee was appalling.

we need to fix this, but we also need to be able to have an adult discussion about it.