Over the last week or so, there has been a constant stream of short diaries itemising the myriad ways in which America has failed itself. I believe it to be true - and the knowledge leaves me shocked and incredulous - that the disaster came after.
It wasn't the wind, nor was it the bursting levees, nor was it entirely the absolutely mind-boggling cluster-fuck of a rescue effort. It was the heartlessness of it all. The rage dissipating in all directions, the preference to pound a million keyboards into jelly than to just pick up and help.
So now, a
shocked observer writes:
"One thing is for sure: America, whose reputation in Europe was already tarnished by its go-it-alone pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, has lost even more respect here thanks to Hurricane Katrina. This is only partly due to the slow and stumbling response of the federal government to the tragedy. It is due more to the revelation of some of America's carefully hidden social problems."
Most of the people from various nations that I've discussed this with feel more or less the same. How can a society do this to itself?
Before being summarily silenced, Kanye West questioned why George Bush hates black people. Kanye, with respect, I think it's far worse than that: I think America hates itself.
I've been in the path of natural disasters on several occasions, some of them simply dangerous and some of them quite deadly. In every single case, no matter where it happened, the same pattern emerged. People appeared from beneath the wreckage, singly or in pairs at first. The first out wandered around, looking at what had happened. Within a fairly short period of time, people began to cluster in small groups, conferring, sharing observations, talking about what needed to be done. Within a fairly short period of time, a self-selected group began triage. This usually consists of starting in on the most immediate problems (often just clearing paths so people and vehicles can pass), then adjusting the effort on each task depending on reports from similar groups.
After cyclone Ivy, we worked our hands bloody clearing the road to the hospital, and then to the airport. I do not once recall seeing anyone in charge. On the contrary, the disaster management committee meeting looked like this. The closest I came to a chain of command was when a child gave me his bush knife, realising that I could make better use of it than he.
As far as I can tell, this instinct seems to have been almost utterly broken in New Orleans. It's not that it didn't exist - there are any number of stories of people attempting to help. What seems to be broken is that society wouldn't allow it. Policemen laugh from their boat as the poor, chest deep in water, ask for direction and aid. The first - the only - person to offer any comfort and aid at the convention centre is a night-club singer. Donations of water, volunteer flotillas, doctors, nurses, search and rescue personnel, all are refused.
And so they leave. They leave; they go home and report their astonishment at the state of things. The anger rises, the attempts to shift focus from the problem at hand increase.
So what, then, is the reaction of the most progressive-minded folks in America when even the stolid, phlegmatic and sanctimonious Swiss can't refrain from observing how broken US society is?
"I too get a bit tired of subtle European put downs and patronizing 'compassion'."
and:
"[H]ow many times has Europe wallowed like a pig in its own blood? And in the blood of its colonists? And I think I can still smell the stench of the crematoria."
America, when are you going to stop shooting the messenger and start accepting the truth? Why such a hateful response? It almost seems as if the American People have been reduced to an ugly caricature, a fiction.
I need to ask one question: Why is there no casualty count? Why is there no death toll? Why is it that in every single disaster, save this one, there is an almost instant attempt at least to estimate the scope of the problem and to measure it in human lives?
With increasing horror, I suspect the reason is shame. I think - no, I pray - that the realisation of the extent to which you have failed your own people will come. But you have to look at it to see it.
America, look what you have done.
In one of the most startling, clarifying moments in recent fiction, Anne Marie MacDonald's first novel Fall On Your Knees follows a ten-year-old girl as she walks from Cape Breton Island to New York City, in search of her dead mother's ex-lover. When they finally meet, the lover expresses her deep love for the young girl's mother.
"You never came to see her," says the young girl.
"I never had the money."
"You could have walked."
"I know."
You could have walked. America, you could have walked. The moment you saw what was happening, you could have walked. You could have gone there, and you could have helped. You could have, as so many have done before, accepted the chaos and, one by one, helped your neighbours out. You could have bypassed the roadblocks in canoes, dinghys and on foot. You could have carried water, medicine and, most of all, comfort.
The city on the hill is drowning in the tide, and like some twisted inversion of King Canute, you respond to the truth with malice and mistrust.