By way of my normally rational pal Brian, I am pointed to an essay by the less commonly rational Lileks as a shining example of some points that Brian had stated earlier.
Which leads me to think—it’s not the Democrats or the liberals that are experiencing blinding partisanship. It’s the Republicans who are allowing their partisan fervor to blind themselves to a level of incompetence that would lead them to spurn a local 7-11 that showed the same traits.
First, and let’s be clear here: it’s a straw man argument that the left is blaming George Bush for the hurricane itself. I have heard some people on the left say that there is some correlation between Katrina and Kyoto, which is clearly a load of horse droppings. The purpose of Kyoto is to prevent the Katrinas of 2025, so the sole connection one can draw between the 2005 version and the actions of the last five years is one of poetic justice. Or injustice, since those who profited from the spiking of Kyoto are profiting from the inundation of New Orleans.
Therefore, I’m not expecting to defend the entire political left from that small subset of us who are ignorant of science. If the Republicans wish to engage me on that score, please, feel free. Between intelligent design and your environmental policies—which will provide a direct causal culpability to future disasters—I’ve got an armory here and you’re stocked with snowballs.
Second, normally this is considered to be a topic that is worthless for debate, but I have to ask the governing right: what do you believe the government is for? As a denizen of Washington and a nominal traveler of the world, I’m exposed to more theoretical and practical forms of government than most, and just about everyone (except the anarchists) from Cato on up believes that a federal government takes on responsibility for the safety of her citizens. Yet all I’m hearing from the right is how those poor, deluded people in New Orleans shouldn’t have sat around waiting for Uncle Sugar to show up and save them.
A libertarian will tell you that a federal government should be vigorous in the face of a natural disaster. But apparently the Republican point of view is that “strong national security” means killing every person who might do us harm, but says nothing about actual safety. I can expect that from the Millennarians who support the idea of God’s wrath proceeding unabated over humans (and forgetting that this was why we started forming cities and governments 20,000 years ago in the first place), but it sounds odd coming from those who are not counting on Messianic Return to save us.
Third, let’s talk about anger. Brian and Lileks seem to buy thoroughly into the theory that those of us who are angry at Bush are enjoying playing the “blame game”. Lileks puts forth the theory, approvingly quoted by Brian, that in the event of the next terrorist attack, the left will swarm out with righteous anger to attack the president, and implies that we are just waiting for the opportunity.
Can I just say? That’s simply evil. Horrifying. Disgusting. Dehumanizing of everyone who doesn’t share your support of the administration. If you want one hint as to why political discourse has degraded to where it is, take a moment to determine why the above didn’t spent one moment resting in the rational thought centers of your brain, and know that the fault lies within yourselves. You will not be able to engage in debate with people you regard as animals, and clearly that’s how you think of us.
That being said, anger has its uses, and what strikes me is that the opposition seems to think that because we’re angry, therefore we must be incoherent. Whereas I note that there are damn good reasons to be angry, in politics as in life, and utter mismanagement of a disaster ranks among the first of these.
No, I cannot prove that the funding cuts to the levees directly led to their breach. It is possible that fully funded levees would also have been destroyed. However, it is true that cutting these funds increased the probability of such a disaster occurring, and so in the face of that same disaster it is rational to accrue some fault to the people who made those decisions.
No, I cannot demonstrate that Clinton’s FEMA would have been more effective at preventing (or at the very least, not causing) the post-disaster atrocities we have witnessed. All I can do is point to the near-unanimous statements that that FEMA was seen to be the best-organized and best-run such agency we’ve ever had. As opposed to this one, which cut the emergency communications lines of neighboring counties.
No, I cannot answer for the actions of state and local officials. It was the local sheriffs who turned away pedestrian refugees trying to flee the city, although initial reports are that federal troops and private security firms have done likewise. I too wonder where the buses were before the storm hit. That being said, I also recognize that municipal bus drivers are not emergency staff, and so in the event of a disaster it could be considered humanitarian to tell them to get the hell out of town.
But on that point—while we can argue the question of philosophical responsibility as long as we like, as a legal matter the issue is settled. Once the governor and the president declared New Orleans a disaster area, responsibility moved up the chain. The purpose of this is to create a single point of responsibility; in a disaster, you do not want federal, state, and local officials answering to different masters. Two people both trying to do good can do harm. So as stated in federal law, the sole source of command and responsibility was FEMA days before the levees broke.
But all of that is still being rational. Let’s do a little anger here.
This is not like other things. This is another 9/11, and it proves that four years to the day we have completely forgotten the lessons we should have taken from 9/11. The lesson that most people learned, apparently, is that people want to kill us and we have to go slaughter them first.
The lesson we should have learned is that living on Earth is dangerous, from both natural and manmade events, and that we have collectively formed communities, governments and nations to protect ourselves. Humans are not armed with fangs or claws or wings, and having solely our brains as our evolutionary means of defense, we use them. That the role of government at any level is to protect its citizens should be so self-evident as to not need debate.
This is the first time we’ve lost a city to natural disaster in a century. Our technological and financial resources are a dozen orders of magnitude more vast than those available to the governments of San Francisco 1906 and Chicago 1871. And yet we still left people to die in their own feces in government-created camps.
As I have said many times in the last four years, I am stunned by how willing my countrymen are to accept things in America that we have prided ourselves as being above. Many accept what takes place here because they believe that no other America could have done better, than whom we elect makes no difference, and that we cannot expect any differently.
In my view, this is treason.
Finally, for my Democratic and leftist friends: you need to get over one article of faith, the idea that eventually there will come a reckoning and the great mass of people who disagree with us will come to our side in a mighty wave. What this month should prove to you is that there is nothing so corrupt, no ineptitude so vast, no wholesale abdication of responsibility so calumnous, to cause this to occur. The frame of the supporters of the president is such that these events only cleave them to him more strongly.
Therefore: stop bitching. This frame exists due to twenty years of hard work by Norquist et al., and will remain until we undo it. Our point is that George Bush cannot keep us safe. This is how he was reelected, and this is where his failures are manifest. Use logic where possible, use emotion where necessary, and use passion to keep yourselves going. Choose your targets well, and don’t waste energy on those who refuse to listen; you can only defeat a framework when an individual chooses to leave it.
We have a message to take to the Christians, who can see the lack of charity from the government; to the poor, who can see their equals left to die and then blamed for it; to the traditional conservatives, who feel their government should be stronger in the face of disaster.
This is not anger, this is not partisan politics. This is about death and misery, and preventing future generations from repeating our failures. This is our failure, every American’s. We are Americans. We can do better.