My shock and outrage at the abysmal and inhuman bungling of the emergency response to Katrina has triggered me to write my first diary entry.
We are all sliding together into the unfathomable future. Each of us shares a common fate, an inexorable ride through that "little life rounded with a sleep." We are all connected, one to each other. As John Dunne said so long ago, "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."
One of the consequences of living in a high-energy, high-technology society is that, paradoxically, while our interdependence is substantially increased, we find it abstracted and hidden by commerce...
More to come...
We no longer help our neighbors build their home, we hire contractors. We no longer toil in the fields, we drive to the supermarket. Every transaction we make in our lives seems to be a simple exchange of currency, but is, in fact, our use of the labor of our fellow human beings.
This abstraction permits us to ignore the reality of these connections between us. They enable us to increase our isolation from those on whom we depend, even as it vastly increases the number of people upon whose labor we depend. It allows us to enjoy the thrill of getting a nice shirt for $17.99 even as it hides the conditions under which some child in Malaysia worked to make that shirt.
Another cliche: Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
I would amend this slightly. I would substitute "ignorance" for "stupidity."
I am a liberal Democrat. But I am so out of a combination of abstract principle and educated preference. I'm a software engineer who lives is a nice house in the exurbs (practically in the country) outside of Minneapolis. I own a nice home. I pay to have my lawn mowed. I get my groceries delivered. I'm one of only two households I know in my area that vote Democratic. My wife and I drive Toyotas and we own two horses. There isn't a black or hispanic family for miles.
This isn't the result of a lack of concern for my fellow humans, but rather of choices made as my personal affluence has risen.
As I have watched with horror the events of the last few days, my abstract principles have been made all too concrete, and with it, my desire to speak out and act for the kind of political change I think we need in this country.
Ease. Ease is the American Disease. As we have been able to move out and hide ourselves from the realities of the economic disparities in this country we have been lulled into a far too passive response to the politics of selfish greed that have gripped this country.
What is going on in New Orleans should shake our complacency more than did the Watts riots all those years ago. In New Orleans we face directly the wrongness of policies that permit the unconscionable concentration of wealth and power in this country. A concentration with which we Democrats have been too complicit. It is time to say, loudly and publicly that economic justice is a social necessity.
Consider the following news stories that are contemporaneous with the current crisis:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2005-09-02-august-empl_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA
So, payrolls grew. That's great news, isn't it?
Not so fast:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aUPJSmThrXtc&refer=us
More jobs, more poverty. Some plan.
It is unconscionable that we didn't start getting rescue assets in place when we knew Katrina would reach at least Category 3 status and that, given its size, it would disrupt such a large area that local resources would be insufficient.
It is unconscionable that people could not afford to escape the storm.
It is even more unconscionable that if there were those who could not escape the storm, no provision was made for the public safety.
All the way back to Locke and Rousseau is the idea of the social contract. That people give up part of their natural sovereignty in exchange for the state's protection of their property and person.
We have, through our comfort, become blind to the social contract. We have, through our money and credit cards, become blind to the people who labor to support our way of life.
This is a house of cards. It cannot stay this way. We do have obligations to least amongst us. We are not islands, entire unto ourselves. The bell tolls for us.