Remember this?
Last night, as I was watching part one of Spike Lee's new HBO Katrina retrospective, "If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise", I was reminded of how what we're experiencing in 2010 is merely an extension of the conservative experiment in social Darwinism that began long before Grover Norquist and Ayn Rand were heroes to the tea party movement:
Thems that have, should have more. And thems that have, should be protected from thems that don't. Tough shit. That's life.
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In early September 2005, I wrote an article on the Hurricane Katrina disaster, titled "Makin' the Nut". At the end of the article, I lamented:
In reality, none of us are much better off than those souls who were left behind in New Orleans last week. Our government has stranded us, too. Yet we continue to support the system that caused the New Orleans disaster to happen. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican. We ‘tut-tut’ as the disaster unfolds, and thank God that we don’t have to walk a mile in those shoes.
The strange thing is that we do.
Every day.
Every single, stinkin’, waking day. To make the nut.
The only difference is that the water might not be as deep where you live.
Anderson Cooper had overcome his Vanderbilt-ian roots and eviscerated Senator Mary Landrieu in a timeless CNN interview. George Bush fiddled while New Orleans drowned. Early on after the scope of the disaster was known, GOP politicians were already opining that perhaps New Orleans should be abandoned, rather than rebuilt, and blaming the victims:
The latest elected official to step into the swamp was Rep. Richard H. Baker, a 10-term Republican from Baton Rouge. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that he was overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
So I don't know why it's any particular surprise that the GOP has blamed po' folk for everything from the U.S. financial meltdown to the lazy bastards who won't find a job causing high unemployment.
When we see the rise of the tea parties and a rabid, blood thirsty response to "the other" (Hispanic, Muslim, whatever), it's merely an extension of the GOP's post-Katrina discourse five summers ago. The population of the entire U.S. Gulf Coast was "the other" - and still is, if the GOP's reaction to the financial calamity that the BP oil gusher is any indication.
...which in a round about way, brings me to the point of this diary.
Spike Lee went down to the Gulf Coast earlier this year to film a 5 year Katrina anniversary documentary for HBO. The first part aired last night; the second part debuts tonight.
While Lee was on location, the BP oil gusher let loose in the Gulf of Mexico, adding extreme insult to past injury. The result is that the whole documentary ends up weaving the various pieces together - inherent poverty, Katrina, "good old boy" politics, the oil spill, and lack of social services as is brutally illustrated by the Charity Hospital segment.
"If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise" is very well done - unlike the recovery efforts five years later. It is depressing that what happened (and continues to happen) on the Gulf Coast can come to pass in the richest nation on the planet. What I took away last night is that New Orleans is the GOP's petri dish for social re-engineering.
If you can stomach reliving the abject failure of government at all levels to perform its most basic of functions, try to catch this excellent presentation.
In the tea bagger / conservative world of social Darwinism, it's survival of the fittest, and everyone else is Vera.