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Edited on Fri Sep-23-05 10:21 AM by LeftHander
Katrina and Rita. Two names that will forever be etched in the minds of Americans. In some ways these unassuming names will take on more significance than the enigmatic three number combination of 911.
What the gulf coast hurricane season of 2005 has done to America is sure to go down in history as the period in time when the smoke screen was blown away and left the core conservative ideology exposed for what it truly is. Ineffective, incapable and incompetent.
Without the cover the cover of terrorism conservative leaders cannot lead. Katrina and Rita have shown the American people what real terror and disaster is. Hurricanes are not some disguised, cloaked shadowy figure training in the deserts of Afghanistan. A hurricane is not a grainy video clip of middle eastern men running through a obstacle course at some generic terrorist training camp. America has found out hurricanes are a real threat to the security of this nation. As a result of this realization the conservative political ideology has suddenly found itself woefully irrelevent.
The shell game that the Bush administration has played with public opinion has finally run it's course. As the administration encountered criticism it would quickly shift focus to the war on terror, to the economy , to same sex marriage, to the culture of life, in a shell game that kept the American public preoccupied. While the shell game played out the very fabric of our society slowly became unraveled. Our country was stripped bare by cronism and pandering corpratists posing as politicians. From stripping the goverment bare, taking away freedom to the weapons of mass destruction that were never found in Iraq the shell game has kept America blind. Blind to a war that appears to heading down the same path to quagmire, with the same justifications as did another 40 years ago. The mission, doomed from the start, has hardly been accomplished. The war on terror and culture of life we found were just taglines that made for good soundbites from a weak ineffective ideology.
Another shell hiding the pip, that is the conservative "id", is the economy. Always touted to be robust and growing, coming off the greatest giveaway to the wealthy in U.S. history, the economy has been exposed as a fragile house of cards that could be toppled with the slightest nudge. ONce stable commodities now are subject to wild specualtion at the hands of traders far removed form the products they trade in. In hukster manner, the President actually encouraged people to spend money on consumer goods after instilling the fear of terror in malls and the streets of our cities with color coded warnings and dire talk of mushroom clouds. The infrastructure that literally drives the nation was undermined in a 48 hour period by a well documented, well known threat, a category 5 hurricane striking the Mississippi river delta.
The pip slid from one shell to another and we followed. Even as the shells became more and more transparent and we could see the folly many of us in this country still put faith that "god" and small government would lead the way to prosperity and a good society. Unfortunately those expectations for the future are better suited to television sitcoms and prime time soap opera than reality. Reality is prayer and small government could not pick stranded people off the rooftops of flooded homes or send truckloads of food and water to the people that needed it. The only thig it could do was coordinate a national day of prayer.
Katrina has dealt the first blow of a one two punch. As New Orleans sank under the flood waters and Biloxi and Gulf Port Mississippi lay in shattered ruins the President "fiddled" at another GOP fund raiser. That Katrina swept away was the false sense of stability and security that conservative ideology had spawned in recent years. The public believed that each person was responsible for themselves and that the greatest military might in the world had every right to kick as and take names in a post 911 world. We felt we could take and do what ever we want in the name of security. The haves took more and the have nots were taking the blame for not being more American. Not having the stuff to pull yourself up by the boot straps and achieve the American dream that came so easy for so much of middle class America. Katrina show the true stuff that America was made of, and we found we didn't like it.
Dogs were feeding on the rotting corpses of the dead in New Orleans. Thousands of people were denied exit from a city sinking and forced to congregate in the filth of the Superdome and the New Orleans convention center. America watched in shock, disbelief as we learned the gross incompetence of leaders, charged with Homeland Security failed to provide any semblance of security for the tens thousands left to fend for themselves in New Orleans.
At the same time the war in Iraq raged. Hundreds were killed in coordinated bombing through out Baghdad despite Vice President Disk Cheney's claim some months ago that the insurgency was on it's last gasp.
Then without warning conservative America saw the shells disappear when gasoline prices rose to $3.50 from $2.35 in less than two days. Suddenly the SUV, the American icon, was really a burden on the family pocketbook. We learned a hard lesson that the government has ignored real warnings for years about the effects of global warming and degradation of the Mississippi river delta. While we watched the news reports on the grave danger that terror possessed a conservative controlled government went about their merry way of dismantling funding and handing the environment over to corporate profit. The majority of America felt it was fine and dandy to cut taxes, slash programs, spend countless billions on a "ism".
All that changed when Katrina slammed into Louisiana and Mississippi.
Now Katrina's sister, Rita stands poised to strike the second blow. Tearing the heart out of our already battered oil supply network. Rita will sweep away not just poor people in a inner city this time. It will strike at the heart of what this country has been founded on, the Texas oil industry and it's wealth.
The problems we face after years of Republican conservative policy are too numerous to list. We have lived too heavily on this earth and now we are due to pay up. Terrorism is nothing compared to the real horror of 170 mile per hour winds ripping homes off foundations, destroying infrastructure and displacing millions of people. Terroism is nothing compared to collective helplessness we all felt as people suffered in the filth in New Orleans while we watched our conservative controlled Government coordinate photo-ops and after the fact rescue efforts. Even when the fallout from Katrina seemed to be at it's hieght the President and his cohorts, true to form, went back to the table and took up the shells and started shuffling and they landed on the old tried and true war on terror.
President Bush even tried to make the claim that terrorism is like Katrina and it was a war on terror that will ultimately keep America secure. Empty hollow words from a small stupid mind.
It is time to pay and the conservative public opinion shell game is pointless now. We now have to turn this country around and show the world what true stewardship is. Our vast wealth and independant sprit should now go to repair, prepare and conserve, not for war, destruction and simple greed. There is no going back to a television inspired dream of "normalcy".
It is time to take our wealth, our industry and our lifestyles and mold them into a system that embraces technology that does not involve the extraction, transportation and consumption of non-renewable sources of energy.
We have to dismantle the oil/war machine and quickly build the green machine and forever leave the conservative shell game behind.
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