What's happened to us?

For the past few days, I've been glued to the news. Developments, or rather non-developments, have actually come at a fairly rapid clip. The press has gotten angry, and I honestly hope that there's a fire lit under people's asses. I would rather that George Bush come out of this looking good, because that means there's a chance that he's going to have done the right thing.

But I have very little faith. Because politics, and by extension government, on all levels as it relates to Louisiana and the gulf coast, has long been overwhelmingly corrupt. This means all the way from the mayor, through the governor, to the senators and an administration they support.

The way we are seeing this play out is that there is no one, not a soul, in government who has stepped up and said "this is my problem and it is the most important thing for me right now to solve it." We don't need men, we need a mensch. And until we find that person, this entire process, from saving the people who are alive to finding the people who have died, from draining the city to cleaning up the entire coast to rebuilding it, will be mired in the bog (tautology, -5) of overspending, underplanning, and covering your own ass.

Someone is going to have to answer for this. I don't mean the fact that a hurricane hit. Liberals, bless 'em, will try to use this to talk about environmental problems. God knows I want to. But for the amount we believe in the correctness of environmental causes, these are not the right questions to be asking now.

In my opinion, a better question is why have we structured a cannibalistic government, and yet not relived tax burdens on the largest sections of the population. If you want to cut taxes, why the hell does it seem to leave everything underprepared?

Even better ones involve who was hired for disaster management. Focus has mostly been on Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, and it should, because he's is a horse's ass that says bluntly stupid and insulting things about the situation he is supposed to be in charge of. A bigger problem is with his bosses. In a working company, his managers would have his ass in a sling, but that's not the way these people do business. And this is going to be a major problem up and down the entire chain of government. I can only predict what the situation in Louisiana will be, but given the level of corruption and nepotism that everyone in that state is completely accustomed to, I have a bad feeling that something terrible will come out. Disaster management seems to be an enormous money sink for a problem that may never materialize. You can hide friends and associates in that governmental structure for a very long time and for a lot of money and never be found out. That is, until there's a disaster.

What's horrible about this patronage bullshit is that it's happening on the Federal level, in the exact same way that it's happened on state and local levels.

Politicians promise so much these days. Even Bush, in the height of his powers, frequently promises to spend money on various programs. Afterwards it's difficult to see the results. Remember hydrogen fuel cells? Remember AIDS in Africa? Most people don't. But most people do remember the disaster that happened to this country and to a city four years ago. I never liked him, but he had a resolve that was infectious. I wanted to believe, and in no small way did believe, that an administration that had found it's political rudder responding to a disaster would want to seem competant if it occurred a second time.

Apparently not. It played its chances, short-changing the very preparedness it was supposed to stand for. This is disaster was terrible. The instant the 17th St. Canal breached, the disaster was terrible. The disaster that followed, the embarassing way that our governments responded, will resonate in American politics for a long time. I don't know how. But when David Brooks is saying that the government "violated the social fabric," this cannot help but be felt for a long time.

I'm still sad. And now I'm also very very angry.