Just an Essay

I'm disappointed and sad.

I knew that this administration was taking money from the poor and funneling it to the rich like a horrifying reverse Robin Hood. I knew that helpful organizations like FEMA and the Red Cross were being headed up by the kind of people who would rape their resources so that funds could be channeled to some purpose much less humanitarian and helpful, a purpose which I'm not sure I can confidently name, but sure feels like imperialistic war when I close my eyes.

I knew that the government vehicles to make this country a cool, modern, tolerant, safe place to live were all being underfunded and taken apart. Puppets were being put in charge, and Haliburton was getting all the new jobs ever created.

But I thought - I thought that in the event of an actual emergency, it wouldn't matter. I thought that people would realize the danger and rally anyway. The fact that the generators that ran the pumps failed and no one was there to fix them, paid or not, the fact that the flooding began and no one loaded up their SUVs with neighbors instead of belongings, the fact that people were in nursing homes asking when someone was coming to get them and NO ONE GOT THEIR ASSES DOWN THERE TO GET THEM, that's what brought me down.

Deep in my heart, I believed that people who didn't approve of the governmental pillage of the emergency services would step up and personally help people if they could. And some did - there was a guy who rented a whole bus and drove it down there himself at enormous personal cost, there are people who've been filling their pickups with supplies and running them past the police and into the hands of people who need them. And, of course, there's Sean Penn who took his famous butt down there in a leaky boat and pulled people off of roofs. There's the famous "looter" kid who took an abandoned bus and picked up everyone he could and headed for Houston.

It wasn't enough, though, it wasn't enough. Today I read an article about a flood that occurred a few years back before FEMA was all but crippled by mismanagement. It spoke of trucks equipped with satellite links to the internet for instant communications. It spoke of the National Guard standing ready for weeks before the flood. It talked of vehicles waiting to transport people to safety in an organized manner. We used to be able to handle things like this. No, a natural disaster is never good, never easy, but it doesn't have to be this bad.

It doesn't have to be this bad. The current administration running the country has made us less safe than we were, and the current administration is in place for the next 3 years. Now that we've lost a major city, what's next? A renewal of public, blatant racism? Loss of women's rights with the woman surrounding W telling us all that it's what we actually want? Another country with imperialistic goals actually invading the U.S. because it's suddenly occurred to them that we no longer have the troops or weapons to defend ourselves at home?

I'm disappointed, and sad.