A Cruel Lesson To Be Learned From the Katrina Holocaust:
We Don’t Have A Government
Robert L. Terrell
There are many important lessons to be learned from the devastating holocaust unleashed in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina.
Some of those lessons inspire pride in basic human nature. They include the totally impressive performance of the helicopter rescue crews that worked canvassed the devastated neighborhoods and infested waters of the submerged city during the hours and days immediately after the hellacious tragedy began.
Seemingly oblivious to the extraordinary danger inherent in their heroic effort, the crews darted back and forth plucking helpless, hapless citizens from perils unimaginable, even as they were undeniably unfolding before our horror struck eyes.
Countless thousands of other citizens responded in similarly impressive ways as the desperate struggle to save lives continued day after excruciating day in deteriorating conditions characterized by exponentially expanding danger.
Thus we had reaffirmed the essential truth that in the worst of circumstances many human beings respond in ways that are purely heroic.
Nonetheless, during the hours and days immediately after the holocaust commenced, we were repeatedly reminded via television images and press reports of the bestial passions released in some human beings when they are subjected to great stress and awesome tragedy.
The murders, assaults, abandonment and looting perpetrated by some of the city’s residents, police officers and alleged care takers during the period in which civil order collapsed teach us something grim about ourselves and our society that should not be avoided or denied.
Eager as always to pander to institutionalized prejudices and ignorance, the mainstream mass media devoted extended and inordinate attention to this dimension of the tragedy, despite the fact that only a small minority of the millions of people swamped by the holocaust engaged in such despicable behavior.
The New Orleans segment of the great storm’s destruction also exposed grim dimensions of this nation’s deeply entrenched system of racial and class apartheid. The terrified thousands poverty stricken victims who huddled in squalor in the Superdome during the worst days of the slowly unfolding tragedy are the most obvious victims of that criminally destructive system.
Similar hordes of wretchedly poor, unhealthy, confused and abandoned citizens reside in virtually every one of the nation’s great cities. Moreover, little has taken place in Washington, D.C., or any other seat of power, since Katrina to indicate that radically different tactics will be employed by the authorities when a similarly destructive event take place in the future.
Under similarly trying circumstances they will also be abandoned to suffer and die like animals while their wealthy cohorts ensconced at the top rungs of the nation’s cruelly efficient caste system are provided comfort and support.
Thus, the most important lesson to be learned from the still unfolding tragedy wrought in New Orleans (and hundreds of communities across the southeast) in the wake of Katrina and subsequent hurricanes is that much of the faith that citizens in this nation typically bestow on government is woefully misplaced.
In other words, the Katrina tragedy has exposed a cruel reality that has deeply troubling ramifications.
That reality is the fact that for all practical purposes, we do not have a government. This is particularly the case for those who are colored and poor.
Recognition of this cold, hard reality is bound to exert a profoundly negative impact on the nation’s affairs during the period immediately ahead.
Assuming the best, people will make the necessary changes in their lives required to ensure their ability to survive the next major catastrophe.
Assuming the worst, the anger and distrust engendered by the horrendous failure of government at every level in response to Katrina will slowly metastasize into the sort of rage and despair currently unfolding across the length and breadth of France, which has a disturbingly similar system of racial and class apartheid.
Despite the danger inherent in our current situation, there seems to be little interest, and less commitment, on the part of the nation’s so-called leaders in addressing the sources of our comprehensive social, economic and political decay.
We are living on the edge.