Posted on September 2nd, 2005 by Gavin M.
I was going to write something last night, and again this afternoon. I’ll try to abstract it now.
I was going to predict that at roughly American network prime-time today, as it moved through the time zones from Pacific to Eastern, the Bush presidency would collapse.
There isn’t any clever way to say this: Hurricane Katrina has become the worst natural disaster and the most titanic governmental fuckup in American history. Everything we’ve said, for years, about Bush’s incompetence, his backwards priorities, his personal weirdness and the pervasive dishonesty of his administration, is now on public view, in a way that brooks no excuses and leaves very little room for spin. And the media isn’t just angry at what’s happening in New Orleans; it’s horrified. Network anchors are losing their shit on-camera. GOP spokespeople are staring like headlit deer. The public seems nearly insensate. After all the blaring orange alerts and relentless pimping of national security — the use of 9-11 to justify every national setback, every policy initiative, every unpalatable decision the Bush administration has made, a foreign war of choice at enormous cost — finally, an emergency happened. And it was worse than we, even we, had feared.
The combined strength of the DHS and FEMA, the National Guard, and the Presidency and its powers, not only allowed a disaster to happen as though in slow motion, while warnings shrieked through the press; but even now, days later, they CAN’T EVEN GET IT TOGETHER TO DELIVER SUPPLIES into a major American city. They CAN’T FIGURE OUT how to put boxes on trucks or in planes and drop them off. For days, as the city sinks deeper into chaos. With bodies eaten by rats in the streets. This is our homeland security.
With all the cheap talk about encouraging America’s enemies, can there be any purer, more flagrant encouragement to those who wish to harm civilians here? If it had been one of those dirty bombs or suitcase nukes we’ve all heard so much about, what would have happened then? And this question also hangs: It’s just like 9-11, isn’t it? Warnings unheeded, a late, strangely toothless military response, an absent President — then later, denials and eqivocations, and aid promised but dilatorily sent. If you’d like to be startled, hunt out the clip of Bush’s first appearance after 9-11, a short prepared speech done as a touch-and-go on the way to an undisclosed location. He looks dissociated and terrified. The ‘strong leader’ PR began later. That was the face of George Bush in a crisis.
I was following a New Orleans police scanner earlier. Three trucks of water and MREs were being delivered to the Superdome. On another blog, I read that Dick Cheney is strangely missing — on vacation in Wyoming, with no expected date of return. Perhaps he’s ill; that would explain why no one in the Executive Branch seems in charge, or even paying attention. Rice is still on vacation, caught shoe-shopping in New York. The National Guard reportedly abandoned operations in New Orleans yesterday, after tangling with a couple of dudes with pistols. Today, according to the scanner, they’re back doing something until the Army can arrive. No citywide evacuation plan is in place.
But at least they got three truckloads of food and water to the Superdome. And although it doesn’t feel good at all, politics in America have changed, these past few days, in ways that will take a long time to be fully understood.
