I’ve been trying to find something to say about the horrible disaster along the Gulf Coast. The commentators I regularly link to from here (the NY Times op-edders, the Huffington Post, TomPaine.com, Information Clearing House, et al.) have doen a far better job than I could hope to provide of explaining and rationalizing this unexplainable, irrational series of events.
Take, for example, TomPaine.com’s E.J. Graff:
“Ours has shown itself to be a government willing to turn its back on the most basic of American moral values: banding together to take care of each other in ways that no one of us can do alone. Yes, it’s a commandment central to the Abrahamic traditions, embedded deeply in Deuteronomy’s and the prophets’ injunctions to care for poor, the needy, the widows and orphans, in Jesus’s tale of the Good Samaritan, or in Islam’s mandatory charitable contributions to the poor. But it’s also a moral commandment for any American–any human being–with a heart.”
That says, more elequantly than I ever could, the gaping hole in our government, in our society at large, that allowed the holes in the levees to happen.
This, friends, is when the previously muddled differences between “family values” and the real right-wing agenda have become nakedly obvious. The ignored calls to prevent the flood, and the botched response to it, have tragically revealed the total arrogance, power-lust, and moral bankruptcy of the Republican regime. All three branches of the federal government, and a number of U.S. state houses, are now under the rusting iron grip of demagogues, grafters, and snake oil salespeople, people who believe the only true roles of government are to reward huge campaign contributors and to start wars.
It’s also shown the inherent strength of the American people. Thousands have moved to help where the Feds didn’t or couldn’t. Don’t listen to square-bashing radical leftists: The vast majority of Americans (including the vast majority of conservative Americans) do have souls, do believe in taking care of one another.
We can rebuild New Orleans, Biloxi, and Mobile. We can rebuild the national social infrastructure as well.
The right-wing sleaze machine has only been able to seize and hold power because of cultural forces it could exploit. I’m talking about the emptying of the middle class, the mainstream media’s obsession with only reaching “upscale” readers/listeners, the tech economy’s indifference toward the old ecnomy’s working class, the emptying out of middle-class wages to enable the hyperinflation of executive salaries, and all the other big and little trends that have helped to make the rich richer and the poor ignored.
Who, among organized political niches, can re-steer the ship of state?
Not the Libertarians, I say. The disaster has proven a need for the services only govrenments can provide.
Not the conservative Democrats of the Democratic Leadership Council, whose Lite Right policies have proven successful at raising corporate campaign donations but disastrous at winning elections–or at accomplishing anything effectual after they do win.
Not the far left, either; despite its predictions having been proved correct about that other quagmire that is the Iraqi occupation. Perhaps sometime later, I’ll list all the reasons why I believe radicalism has become just a different kind of conservatism.
No, this country needs what’s always worked for it. It needs a progressive populist coalition of salt-of-the-earth conservatives, unreconstructed liberals, working folks, unemployed folks, all the genders and races, and everybody else who gives a damn about getting things done for the people.
