I have very little to say at the moment. I am beyond rage.
There are tens of thousands dead, not just in the city, but across the region; I have no qualms about saying it. And there will be tens of thousands more even if everything went perfectly from this moment forward. And you can lay the blame for many, many of those deaths at the doorstep of the fucked up "Can't happen here, bad stuff happens only outside our borders" mentality of those whose responsibility it was to deal with it.
I can understand hurricanes, even been in the nasty edges of one once. It's the fuckers who refused to listen to every word of warning of how this was going to play out BEFOREHAND. You want a time for blame? The time for blame is now.
Bush and his administration have only one option now: own it.
America - whatever's left of it - and Americans can't even begin wrap their minds around the magnitude of this. It's nothing but dominoes from here.
Mayor Ray Nagin tonight on WWL said what needed to be said. Now it's time to act. Time to show up. Time to DEMAND the too little too late START - and demand those who ignored every word of warning and simple reality answer for both what they have and haven't done.
So, welcome to our 'safer', 'more secure' homeland. Aren't you glad our most basic liberties and freedoms were exchanged for the fantasy of men in white hazmat suits appearing within an hour after catastrophe and cueing up the 'everything's better music'?
We as a country are unable to comprehend:
- Race
- The ongoing racial disparity and history here
- Poverty
- Illness and disability
- Lack of transportation
- etc, etc, etc.
And these fuckers are unable to think systemically. Hell, they're unable to comprehend that levees built for a cat 3 hurricane can't handle a cat 4.
They can't even comprehend, that with the water rising people outside the dome were going to go to high ground, so they get taken completely off guard until yesterday DESPITE having helicopters up over the city all the damn time.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: "Sir, you aren't just telling me you just learned that the folks at the Convention Center didn't have food and water until today, are you? You had no idea they were completely cut off?"
(CROSSTALK)
MICHAEL BROWN, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY: "Paula, the federal government did not even know about the Convention Center people until today."
Then they turn around and blame the victims.
I want my country back. But these fuckers broke it.