The aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti is a tragedy on such a scale that it almost seems farcical. After a certain number of deaths it becomes less and less a tale of human actors and judgments spurned on by a cataclysmic, implacable and indifferent step of nature and turns instead into a grim and bleak drama of epic proportions, geography, demographics and infrastructure.
And, what, aside from the experts, can anyone say about that?
"It sucks. I'm sorry. Best wishes. Our prayers. I wish I could help."
And, do we really expect much from "the experts" anyway? Ever cavalier. Professionally wrong. Somber in their hopelessness. Cognizant only of their worthless infallibility if they've compromised enough to get into the positions worth getting into.
An elite club of bickering, ivory-coated academics and coastal chatterers so spiritually and intellectually compromised that anything other than the pro forma is anathema. So tethered to distinct lines of thought, areas of investment, ideas about trade, philosophies on democracy and of course and un-manned allegiance to some form capitalism or another. And to what end? Whither any sort of purpose? TV time, perhaps? A calm and collected white face in the state of black panic a couple thousand miles away?
So, we'll have the media feeding frenzy. A kind of Katrina-lite. And, yet, only this if we're really lucky. The names, places and faces are all foreign. All too foreign. We, as a country, are not assumed to bear direct responsibility (more on this later) so there won't be the righteous indignation, the callous dismissal of boilerplate, the acute focus on the particulars. Just the grandstanding. The proclamations. (Consider this as such? Jeez. I don't know.) Maybe a Jeremiad or two.
But our media's too tame and too timid to get at true human angles anyway, too lame and lackluster to rise above their own staid putrescence and too myopic and short-sighted to even take the smallest of chinks out of the armor of the larger issues, much less the issues themselves, because, honestly, the common wisdom, of which our media holds the banner, provides the armor in the first place.
Let's remember that Katrina changed nothing structurally for this profit-and-info-graphic-seeking beast. There was nothing akin to the toppling of the Bastille (an unused prison!) when an entire U.S. city drowned. It shed no light and realized no realizations about the decrepit state of things whether in the media's own house or in it's greater, flagging role as our Fourth Estate and certainly not in or about the blind nature and decaying makeup of our little fledgling American society and experiment itself.
Katrina, that heart-breaker of heart-breakers, simply blew the lid off of a steeping curiosity for a select few courtiers, outraged at a flippant selfishness and shamelessness made less abhorrent only in the abysmally paltry response. And, so we applauded their diligence and vigilance and empathized with their heartbreak, hoping, that one day, they'd find the time to empathize with ours. But, we weren't blinded by this outburst of emotion, just true to our own and so, we smiled wryly but proudly at their appropriately seething anger and preserved it for posterity in the form of YouTube videos and the plaudits provided immediately after the fact. But then...back to the old ways. Post-haste. All of us.
So now let's boldly, soberly and unfortunately accept that for most of America the Haitians who've died, are dying and will die are simply just Haitians. Who? Where? Exactly.
It's just so unreal. Too unreal. Over 100,000 people dead. A mere 700 miles from Miami. So close yet, too far. And no one to bring it home. If they do, no one to listen.
And, of course, this is what it's taken to alert most Americans to the fact that Haiti exists as something outside of a snippet from a World History textbook they may or may not have gotten to in their sophomore year of high school.
And, for the relatively few who did have some idea of the country, there's the eternally fun and easily answerable question of whether U.S. involvement in the island nation's history will be looked upon askance?
In light of what seems to be a rapid and aggressive mobilization of relief efforts based out of the United States on behalf of the U.S. government and private aid organizations, will that ugly history be whitewashed? Given short-shrift? Ignored for a goal seeming Great? Forgiven perhaps?
Will a critical eye be cast on America, the nation directly responsible for a great deal of modern Haiti's instability? And what of Bill Clinton? This is the man who was at the helm during the U.S.'s destabilization efforts, who is now the UN Envoy sent to stabilize the very place he had a hand in destabilizing in the first place. What script does this character read? Who pens the plot? Well, all of us, a bit. But what makes it through the re-writes?
I'm really just asking. I really don't know.
And then, as if the facts weren't tragic enough, there are the comments from the American Taliban mainstays:
Rush Limbaugh is saying it's unimportant because of Haiti's meager economic output and issuing some boilerplate and breathless race-baiting.
The Fox Nation (whatever that is) is taking issue with the rapidity of Obama's response contra the attempted bombing on Christmas Day.
And Pat Robertson is going for the jugular of Decency by claiming that his vengeful sky-god is taking punitive action against the island for some pact they made "with the devil" during a period of history which does not exist.
Can't we put these people on cleanup duty? Bill Clinton by their side? The press corps and experts summarily roped in and forced to rebuild the messes they've colluded to ensure will continue to be brought about or at least made worse by their sheer negligence and cocktail parties?
Of course not.
It's just a thought in solidarity with a people wrecked and ravaged.
Farce cum farce.