Political Mama

How do they sleep at night? How do any of us? I didn't, not that much anyhow those first few days. It seemed I shouldn't, couldn't when all that suffering was happening. I was in DC with my hubby and the boys. I was working and they were having a vacation, and as I stood all day at the American Political Science Association meeting, I thought of little else. But I did nothing.

I so wrongly assumed that there would be people whose job it was to take care of people. There would be those who knew how to help all those people.

I thought that's what this presidency was all about. I assumed that if nothing else, Bush would be able to mobilize people. I really thought they'd wargamed catastrophe. I was wrong. And so as New Orleans exploded, and I watched the naked desperation all over TV and handed out text books, I felt guilty.

Realistically there is nothing I could have done, short of money. My husband and I would have driven down there, but we have two small children and we can't put them in jeopardy.

I'd send things, but to whom? where?

And they had warning. It's not like it could easily be for us in New York, like 9/11... Sudden and shocking. I stayed awake and watched the faultless luting and the picking up of people through attics.

We talked about taking in animals, my husband and me, but again we have two small children and two highly neurotic animals, so I could nothing but feel bad.

That's me. I'm sleeping again now, but George Bush and Mr. Chertoff never should again.

I have heard a lot over the last few weeks about Katrina and race. It seems to me that this is a great opportunity to open a dialogue about race in this country. I heard this morning on CNN that some poll recently taken shows that 18% of whites (I'm assuming they mean nonblacks but who knows) feel that the response time would have been different if it were white people standing outside the Convention Center in New Orleans looking for help, while %60 of black people felt that race was involved.

Which means ultimately that %60 percent of black people feel that we would rather watch them suffer than get help to them. Wow.

There is a huge difference in the perceptions of white people regarding black people and visa versa. White people I know like to say that black people should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work it out. What they don't fully appreciate, however, is how institutionalized racism still rules this country.

Many of us were blindsided. Well-meaning of course, but blindsided by the fact that all those people didn't have transportation out of the city, or that when they did own a car they might not be able to afford gas, and if they could afford gas, where would they go? They hadn't even entered into my equation of how to evacuate a city. Of course I'm not a paid city planner, I'm just a news junky schmuck who likes to think about stuff.

Do I believe that it was conscious discrimination. I can't. I just can't and consider myself an American. I won't believe that we would turn our back on our own, in a crisis that is none of their making.

I really think in the minds of many Americans, and in fact, it was more a matter of poverty than race.

I also know that one of the worst fears of white people, since slavery, are angry gangs of armed black people running around the countryside.

Would we have called it looting so quickly if it were white people breaking into stores for supplies to feed their families, and white militias running around with arms? I doubt it. They would be survivalists who were protecting their own families.

By the same token I know (thanks for pointing out the obvious, Mr. President) that the coast guard rescued merely those in need. But do I think if it were white faces standing outside the Superdome Mr. Bush would have gone to bed Tues. night? I just don't know.

So as I watch the coverage of Katrina, and the endless shelters, and the mind altering suffering, I can't help but wonder when we got the idea that good people believe in God, and godless people believe in greed.

It almost seems accepted now, a thing that's not questioned. But I've found, controversial as it seems, that atheists and agnostics, or nonaffiliated people are far more good than the people mindlessly looking for a reward they believe will come. Atheists/agnostics know that this life is their only chance, and they owe it to whoever comes next to do the best they can.

Of course I'm not saying that all godless people are good, or that those that believe in God are greedy, but it does seem to work out that way many times. At least as often as the other way.

Here's what I keep wondering though. How did we let "them" dictate goodness, or aid, or any of it. How did we let them convince us that they would protect us?

Will people wake up now? I'm up. They've got my attention. I bet they have the Gulf Coasts' attention. I know New Yorkers, in imminent threat of some kind of attack, are paying attention.

But then there are the people who are good, and decent, god fearing or not, that say things like, "well we are Republicans, we'll take care of ourselves. We're not looking for handouts." Why not? What is a government for if not to protect? To help us in ways we are incapable of?

Is it to fool us into praying as they pass around the coffers to give to the God loving Haliburtons and big businesses?

I'm despondent, bereft, confused, and at this moment, feeling awfully godless at a time when God is pretty much all that's left.

Wow. I mean wow. I've been out of town and not next to a computer. The breadth of the disaster blows me away. The scope of it floors me, and yet it makes a bunch of sense too.

Perhaps the US is the perfect example of individualism run amok. Perhaps we know that now. I cannot find a more telling example of our unbelievable ethnocentrism, than evacuating a city and expecting everyone to just "make it out on their own."

We don't have plans, we don't have contigencies. We stick a bunch of people in a place and expect first, that they will get food and water themselves, and that I don't know, God won't let that happen in America?

That can't be right, and yet it is. It is. I'm guilty too. I'm sick about it, but I'm guilty. For different reasons perhaps, but guilty nonetheless.

I don't think God doesn't send natural disasters to the blessed US of A. I just thought if it did, someone would have a contingency plan. I just assumed. I assumed that if I was watching Anderson Cooper, or Geraldo Rivera, or any number of other reporters whose names are beside the point, the cavalry had to be able to get in as well.

Apparently that doesn't happen in this country unless the media is there already. Apparently we only care about people, after we've seen them on TV. We are a nation who's lost our imagine for the horrible. We only see what is in front of us.

And by the same token, we are a wonderful nation full of caring people. It is that same individualism that compels us (once we've seen the pictures) to give whatever we can, wherever we can, because on some level we understand that the Gulf coast is really closer than we ever thought about before.

This is a national trauma. As a New Yorker, I can say it's every bit as bad, if not 100xs worse than 9/11, since it is ongoing and help was there for us in a matter of hours, not days. We will get through it because we always do, because as individuals we are a fabulous people who actually believe in ideals our government falls short of time and time again.

I would link you to the red cross and other agencies, but I'm sure you've given already.