Citizen or Consumer

In a nation of radical individualist there seems to be no room for a national organization that addresses disasters on the scale of Katrina. In the 1950s there was a semblance of national thinking with the organization other wise known as Civil Defense. The reason for that of course was the nuclear threat and cold war jitters. When I was 14, my across the street neighbor built a big underground fallout shelter. There were six children in that family. There was only one in a town of 6,000. Think about it.

So. We have somewhat nationalized national preparedness by developing FEMA and then comes the establishment of Homeland Security. FEMA was at one time a truly federal and nation wide approach to disasters of scale. Homeland Security on the other hand is a radical class and political reactionary construct that is filled with political hacks and sadistic wannabes who are able to demand that you remove your shoes before boarding a passenger aircraft. We are becoming a nation of incarceration and prison guards. All this is of course privatized and meets all the specifications of a particular political worldview. Look in any daily newspaper and you will find ersatz universities offering courses and degrees in Criminal Justice and Incarceration Management. An industry is being created. It is a private industry and comes with share holders. Share holders must be satisfied and so the de jure criminalization of a broader range of behaviors must be instituted. The effect is the ever widening institution of consurmerization. We are no longer are considered citizens even by government. We have long been considered to be consumers and market segments by classic private and "publicly" held institutions of commerce. A system is now emerging that is no longer government as a shared responsibility of citizens but is now rather as a sanctioning agency owned by whoever has the most money and the best connections.

So, back to the question, "Who is in charge?"

It is no longer you , Citizen. Government is the shared responsibility of citizens. It is not something that just fell to earth and took over. It is not some thing that is separate and apart from a greater collection of individuals with shared interests. We fought a bloody and lengthy civil war to decide if we would be a confederation of states with individual interests or a nation of a whole with shared interests. The emergence of the movement of privatization of the functions of government is in fact the resurgence of confederation and privilege for special interests. The only connecting values they share is the protection of wealth and position. The drift in that direction can last only so long. Our national experience trauma and prosperity is cyclic and self adjusting. One must read or be taught the history of the U.S. as a nation to understand how that works. The civilizations out of which this nation emerged were cyclic and self adjusting until they chose or were forced not to be. Our story continues.

The Real Stuff

Big up for this site. You can never say enough good things about CeeBees and FDNY.

Eye of the Storm

I am just a miserable Lantern Bearer.

A Wonderful Turn of Events

What a wonderful turn of events. To think that one week ago the disaster that was Katrina seemed insurmountable. The President was on the ropes and his corner men were spinning and working hard to staunch the flow of political vitals. A large number of people were in misery and lost to the world. The experimental program of benign neglect was not working and once the word was given to make thing rights it started to become so. Thank you, Captain Kirk.

Today Michael Brown ends his unqualified position at the head of FEMA. There need be no apology or statement about following up on other interests. "Yeah, git out here Brownie. Go get another keg."

The best news is that the waters are receding from the streets of NOLA. People are still straggling out of attics and upper stories of buildings. They have the look and smell of death and despair. I have been in touch with an under utilized first responder who has been in NOLA with his rescue dog since Wednesday a week ago. He is well qualified and trained in vertical insertion with the dog. He has spent most of his time waiting and being hustled around for photo ops with the brass and poobahs. He is not happy. There is still misery to be salved but the will and the way have not yet reached 100%.

Of course there is a downside to all the attention that NOLA is getting. There are many areas of southern Alabama and Mississippi that are under reported and under served by way of high profile rescue efforts. I am sure that the prezdent sent someone out to help Ol' Trent clean up his lot (OOpps! NPI) so they can get started on that porch. So while Ol' Trent is being served there are still crackers, small holders and tenants at the ends of sand roads living under cobbled together sheds watching the choppers go over heading for the coast and they can hear the relief trucks going by them on the main highways heading south for the bays and beaches. Some have been lucky enough to get their trailer level again and some have pieced together living quarters in farm buildings and some have been lucky enough to get a little clean water and a bag of grits from the relief. And then of course many have been able to get to Wal-Mart and start over.

What a shame to have a perfectly good country devolve into a statistic that that is at the bottom of every index except executive pay and credit card debt. This disaster and recovery shores up the observation one of my mentors made. She said, "We don't have a problem of lack of stuff in this country; we have a distribution problem." I believe we have seen in this event and in other disastrous events in the near past that stuff and money is never the problem. The problem is the will and way to get it spread out to those who need it.

My good friend from Michigan would say to me when he would catch me in a dither, “What the hell, . . ., you waiting for the house to fall on you.”