How the Facts Came to Hate America

[Memekiller]

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/1/19479/60038
Chris Mooney, the author of Republican War on Science, wrote a rather prescient article about what would befall his hometown of New Orleans if it was hit by a Category 5 hurricane. Regular readers of Mooney’s blog have witnessed an increasingly desperate tone as the hurricane approached his hometown, wondering why no one heeded the warnings. Now, the hotel lobbies of Houston where I live are filled with (I never thought I’d say this about Americans) refugees who made it out before the storm. Restive people are being turned away at the Astrodome parking lot as they come looking for food and a roof over their head. It only hints at the chaos that must be happening one state over. Yet, that chaos is familiar.

Reinforcements of the National Guard were not sent in to quickly establish law and order, leaving the city to devolve into looting, death and violence directed at the people sent there to help them. Those with the responsibility for security claim “no one could have foreseen” what has been written about extensively not just by Mooney but in Times-Picayune as well as broadcast on NOW and CNN. In the hands of Bush’s brand of humanitarianism, even an American city can start looking a lot like Baghdad.