New Orleans and the Death of the Common Good- By CHRIS FLOYD

[KG]

The Perfect Storm
New Orleans and the Death of the Common Good
By CHRIS FLOYD

"The river rose all day,
The river rose all night.
Some people got lost in the flood,
Some people got away all right.
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemine:
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline.

"Louisiana, Louisiana,
They're trying to wash us away,
They're trying to wash us away."

-- Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927

The destruction of New Orleans represents a confluence of many of the most pernicious trends in American politics and culture: poverty, racism, militarism, elitist greed, environmental abuse, public corruption and the decay of democracy at every level.

Much of this is embodied in the odd phrasing that even the most circumspect mainstream media sources have been using to describe the hardest-hit victims of the storm and its devastating aftermath: "those who chose to stay behind." Instantly, the situation has been framed with language to flatter the prejudices of the comfortable and deny the reality of the most vulnerable.

It is obvious that the vast majority of those who failed to evacuate are poor: they had nowhere else to go, no way to get there, no means to sustain themselves and their families on strange ground. While there were certainly people who stayed behind by choice, most stayed behind because they had no choice. They were trapped by their poverty ­ and many have paid the price with their lives.

Yet across the media spectrum, the faint hint of disapproval drips from the affluent observers, the clear implication that the victims were just too lazy and shiftless to get out of harm's way. There is simply no understanding ­ not even an attempt at understanding ­ the destitution, the isolation, the immobility of the poor and the sick and the broken among us.

This is from the "respectable" media; the great right-wing echo chamber was even less restrained, of course, leaping straight into giddy convulsions of racism at the first reports of looting in the devastated city. In the pinched-gonad squeals of Rush Limbaugh and his fellow hatemongers, the hard-right media immediately conjured up images of wild-eyed darkies rampaging through the streets in an orgy of violence and thievery.

Not that the mainstreamers ignored the racist angle. There was the already infamous juxtaposition of captions for wire service photos, where depictions of essentially the same scene ­ desperate people wading through flood waters, clutching plastic bags full of groceries ­ were given markedly different spins. In one picture, a white couple are described as struggling along after finding bread and soda at a grocery store. But beneath an almost identical photo of a young black man with a bag of groceries, we are told that a "looter" wades through the streets after robbing a grocery store. In the photo I saw, this evil miscreant also had a ­ gasp! ­ pack of diapers under his arm.

MORE>>>> http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd09012005.html

[neuvocat]

1. This is the hands-off government.

You know it sure is funny how all those freepers told us that the less involvement the federal government had the better and yet at the same time it had to be given broader powers to combat the war on terror. Now they've got a government that will know everything about you if you check out the wrong library card, but if you end up homeless due to a disaster, it won't have any idea you even exist.

[xchrom]

2. hey, what can you say?

how long have scientists been warning us of a disaster brought by ever more furious hurricanes coming to the united states -- could we be bothered to listen?
no.

and now the chickens and their political leaders have come home to roost.

this has been interesting, sad, frustrating, infuriating to watch.

but america has made it's own bed -- and now there can be no denying we have to lay in it.

[JackDragna]

3. This article is spot-on.

A more articulate description of what happened is not possible.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. That's incredible. I woke up this morning and the first thing

I did was start a thread on DU pointing out some of the salient points in this article. I've read at least two other threads which are saying the same thing! Maybe consensus is growing!

[teryang]

5. They're drowning the baby in the bathtub...

...just like the repukes promised.

[Coastie for Truth]

6. Articles of Impeachment

The actions of this Administration, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and Mr. Chertoff, is so grossly negligent as to constitute "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" and to be grounds of impeachment.

There is no excuse -- and if these were previous "executive" decisions (i.e., not upgrading the levees) - they were so negligent as to be gross negligence.

[beetbox]

7. This is required reading- Need more Nominations

I have been making copies of this and passing it around.

thank you.

[Eloriel]

8. You betcha. I will ALWAYS nominate a Chirs Floyd column n/t

[struggle4progress]

9. Reframe. Speak of "Those who chose to abandon their neighbors" and ..

.. "those they left behind"

[Briar]

10. So when will the Democrats get off the "taxes are evil"

and "the government is our enemy" bandwagon and state the need for investment in the physical and social infrastructure of the country?

And yes, that "Cut taxes, hate the government" right wing election cry is inherently racist. White electors have been trained to see the main beneficiaries of benefits, the Benefit Queens in their Cadillacs, as black. That's been the subtext of the great consensus against the New Deal and all liberal social and political positions for 40 years! Time we rehabilitated the New Deal (and its equivalent in the UK) and found politicians ready to promote policies with people and their needs at their heart, not profits for the few. Time we stopped cringing and shrinking away from words like liberal and socialist and social contract and stood our ground against the baiters who use "commie" as a term of abuse against all those who recognise the responsibility of all to help all.

[DemoTex]

11. Floyd of The Moscow Times hits us with a cold, dead fish: REALITY.

But as culpable, criminal and loathsome as the Bush Administration is, it is only the apotheosis of an overarching trend in American society that has been gathering force for decades: the destruction of the idea of a common good, a public sector whose benefits and responsibilities are shared by all, and directed by the consent of the governed. For more than 30 years, the corporate Right has waged a relentless and highly focused campaign against the common good, seeking to atomize individuals into isolated "consumer units" whose political energies ­ kept deliberately underinformed by the ubiquitous corporate media ­ can be diverted into emotionalized "hot button" issues (gay marriage, school prayer, intelligent design, flag burning, welfare queens, drugs, porn, abortion, teen sex, commie subversion, terrorist threats, etc., etc.) that never threaten Big Money's bottom line.

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd09012005.html

While the last few days have been a virtual bonanza of pithy editorials, op/ed pieces, and political cartoons, Chris Floyd's excellent (as always) op/ed from The Moscow Times cuts to the heart (or lack thereof) of the matter.

Mac