The Big Difficult, And The New York Times

Update, 13:28 EST: A Contratimes reader sent me this link to a story about New Orleans. I post it here not because I believe New Orleans deserves punishment for its reputation for lawlessness or orgiastic living. I include it here because it might explain why the National Guard and Louisiana police are dealing with not only looting, but violence, violence directed at rescuers. As if the whole process was not already sufficiently impeded, there are now rumors of armed gangs marauding the byways of the Big Easy, which has truly become the Big Difficult. Here's a quote that should wrack the nervous system of any caring soul:

"Gunfire is so common in New Orleans -- and criminals so fierce -- that when university researchers conducted an experiment last year in which they had cops fire 700 blank rounds in a neighborhood on a random afternoon 'no one called to report the gunfire,' reported AP."

It is clear then, that the thugs in New Orleans (please read the cited article) are now in a desperate place: the lawless are about to lose complete control over their territories, either that which was their's before the storm, or that which they've claimed since. Compassionate as I am, and I try to be to the core, it is difficult to extend mercy and aid to such people. Many of them have already found shelter and succor and solace among the patient folks at the Superdome (and have reportedly tyrannized the vulnerable in that shelter).

Lastly, it is not the sort of environs I want President Bush visiting or touring. My sense is that he's entirely vulnerable right now, and I'm not talking politically. To the lovers of chaos, he's a marked man.

***

Twice now in the past twenty-four hours I have heard the statement that the Gulf Coast disaster area covers more than 100,000 square miles. That's at least an area 200 miles wide by 500 miles long. Think of an area the size of most of New England.

This morning: fire breaks out in New Orleans. There are rumors of rape, abuse, thievery, thuggery, even among refugees in the Superdome. Others report that many victims who died in the hurricane chose not to evacuate their homes for fear of looters.

And there are reports that many of the nation's key airports are perhaps one week away from running out of jet fuel.

OK. Grimace, wince, groan, grieve. There is abundant sorrow afoot, and catastrophic need. There are hard times ahead. We are all in this together. What then shall we do?

First, I am going to heed the President's promptings, even though they are quite different than his post 9/11 speeches. Then we were encouraged to keep spending, to go on living life as we would normally. But yesterday we were told not to buy gas if we did not NEED it. Despite the disparate messages (after all, the events are very different), I will heed his call. I am destined to be a homebody. But my bicycle is at the ready.

Second, I am going to make a donation, maybe two. Of course, this puts me in the company of millions of mindful Americans. The thing is, as relief experts have already pointed out, we will have to be mindful of the need far longer than this newscycle: this is going to take time, patience, attentiveness and sacrifice–for a long while. More than one donation may be needed. Please be mindful that there are numerous fraudulent relief agencies already setup to steal your money, and to steal money from victims. This is utterly demonic. It deserves the stiffest and most unmerciful penalties. If you donate, either give to the Red Cross, or go to the FEMA website for a list of trustworthy relief organizations.

Now, for the really disturbing stuff:

Let me just remind readers what relief workers have been up against. We're are talking about the destruction and compromise of even the relief infrastructure. Police and fire stations, highways and bridges, and all communications systems have been lost. Local relief workers can't connect with other local teams; state workers can't speak to either state or local relief workers; and the federal government can't speak to any of them either. On top of this is the sad reality that victims also can't receive any information, particularly about the scope of destruction. When is help coming? Well, it ain't coming like it does in the movies, that's for certain.

Let me state the obvious, especially for those who look for any opportunity to despise President Bush. This president has now had both the worst terrorist attack and the worst natural disaster in American history occur on his watch. There are no college classes offered at Yale or Harvard or Berkeley to prepare anyone for these sorts of things, considering that this is not merely a person making declarations in a vacuum, but a man dealing with the tremendous cacophony of political voices shouting instructions his way. In times like these, it is only prudent to shut up and lend a hand to the president and our other leaders.

And there is no more despicable piece of gratuitous political self-indulgence than alleged political analyst David Sanger's front page "analysis" printed in yesterday's New York Times. Please read the first two paragraphs of this man's "in-depth" commentary:

News Analysis: Hard New Test for President
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 - Not since he sat in a Florida classroom as the World Trade Center burned a thousand miles away has President Bush faced a test quite like the one he returned to Washington to confront this afternoon.

After initially stumbling through that disorienting day almost exactly four years ago, Mr. Bush entered what many of his aides believe were the finest hours of his presidency. But unlike 2001, when Mr. Bush was freshly elected and there was little question that the response would include a military strike, Mr. Bush confronts this disaster with his political capital depleted by the war in Iraq.

That this is replete with the fallacy ad hominem abusive is self-evident. That it is a repackaging of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is also self-evident. But most importantly, it is not a low blow, it's an evil one. It is the sort of rhetoric one might hear hissed by a serpent.

Did George Bush abdicate his duties to the United States by sitting at a children's bookreading for 7 minutes on September 11, 2001? If so, exactly what should he have done that was not already being done on local, state, and federal levels? Is Sanger (and Michael Moore) so thoroughly naive about domestic affairs that he fails to realize that America was already hard at work in both the private and public sectors confronting the grand anomaly which was September 11? Would Mr. Sanger have preferred that Mr. Bush jump up from his chair and run to the nearest phone booth to change into his Superman suit?

That Sanger suggests Bush might not be able to enter another fine hour like he did immediately after September 11 because his "political capital is depleted by the war in Iraq," is the sort of guile voiced by devils. For Sanger ignores the fact that Bush rose to his "finest hours of his presidency" at a period when he had no political capital at all. Forsooth, this was a president (how quickly we forget) who was illegitimately placed in office by the machinations of an allegedly corrupt Supreme Court; a president who allegedly stole an election. What capital, pray tell, did Mr. Bush have in the capital, Mr. Sanger? Or was Bush merely propped up by the nefarious Karl Rove, the real voice behind the stilted, tongue-stumbling, malaprop-driven Bush?

Moreover, who says Bush "stumbled" through the first hours of September 11 other than Mr. Sanger? What does that even mean? Nothing like September 11 had ever happened before to any president, let alone any leader in the modern world, with tragedy unfolding world-wide in real-time. Mr. Sanger, what would a normal response be to such an aberrant moment in world affairs? Please, I beg you, inform us. Perhaps your clarification will bend me in your favor, and I shall deem you worthy to be president. Clearly, sir, at the very least you think you know how to handle such deep and profound matters. Please, show us your hand.

But Mr. Sanger will not show us his hand, because he is all form, devoid of substance. He is a beguiler, a teller of tales, dispensing soporifics. He is not out waking people, but lulling them to sleep. He is Wormtongue (though only one among many). He is on the staff of the New York Times, the opiate of the people.

His remarks are not merely mendacious, they are traitorous, especially considering the time, the hour, the need. He is a different sort of looter, a different sort of thug. He is a thug with a pen and a paper.

We are at war right now, a civil war, a war against nature, time, death, disease, pestilence, a war against tragedy. Pulling down the leadership at this moment is like shooting a hot-air balloon from the basket underneath. Imagine, during the holocaust of 9/11, people stopping firefighters as they ascended the World Trade Center stairs. Imagine these people telling the firefighters that the catastrophe was Bush's fault; that he was still in Florida; that he was mishandling the affair. Imagine them telling rescuers that they were "brainwashed" for thinking that radical Islam was a threat; or that Bush didn't care about them, that he just lived for vacation and Big Oil.

But one need not imagine that now, with this New Orleans catastrophe. For the naysayers are everywhere, rebuking, rebuffing, and ceaselessly complaining. It is all too real. It is all too sad.

Contratimes

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