File Today's Feelings for Future Use

[dweller]

by David Rossie

Remember the pictures. The bodies floating in the flood waters, the hunger-plagued children, the anguished mothers, the hopeless
elderly, the heroic Coast Guard rescue teams. Remember them. Remember them as the city's slow recovery proceeds and the last
presidential platitude has mercifully faded away.

Remember that this didn't happen in Haiti or Bangladesh or some other Third World backwater. It happened here. Remember why it
happened and who allowed it to get as bad as it got. Remember it when the midterm elections come around a year from November.
Keep all of it in mind, because those elections can be, must be, the first step toward reclaiming this once-proud nation's
respectability.

The voters of this country made a tragic blunder in 2000 and they compounded it last year, and there is no forcing the genie back
into the bottle. But the past does not have to be prologue. If the Democrats can somehow find a voice and an agenda, not to
mention a spine, and recapture the House or Senate or both, they can at least slow if not halt the decline of this country toward a
social level comparable to that of 17th century England.

The failure of FEMA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, in bringing relief to the stranded inhabitants of
New Orleans and the failure of our detached-from-reality president once again to respond to a crisis in a timely manner, were so
glaring that even the tame media could not ignore it.

originally published: Press & Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, NY) but is now 404'd.
linked at: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0909-29.htm

the more things change...
dp