I'm just as angry and outraged by the government's response to Hurricane Katrina as everyone else. I don't to forget to include the civic and state governments in those feelings. But I have another perspective on this too: fear.
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I live in Oakland, California, about a mile west of the Hayward Fault and about ten miles east of the San Andreas Fault. This city is in a "bowl" of sorts, too, surrounded as it is by those two faults, and a major disaster is just as inevitable here as it was in New Orleans.
Oakland is also a "black city," at least in the popular imagination, even with people who should know better. I'm pretty damned sure Oakland is a "black city" when people in Washington, D.C., who don't know better, think about it. While some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country are in Oakland, and there is a thriving middle class, there is also a part of the city that is poor, black and without many resources, and another thoroughly urbanized segment that, like me, doesn't own a car a here in the heart of the Bay Area's public transportation infrastructure.
Watching the horror in New Orleans, I feel like I'm looking at Oakland's future: when the big one hits, I now feel pretty sure that Oakland and "the blacks" will be abandoned to their fate: no supplies, no law and order, no food, no water, fires out of control, misery everywhere, the sick and aged left to fend for themselves, a response utterly lacking in empathy and urgency. For the first time in my life, I'm considering buying a gun to protect myself and my loved ones, and for the first time in my life, even after the last two elections, I'm thinking that maybe it would be better to live in a country that places more value on all it's population, not just the ones who are friends or business partners of the government.
I've reached a level of fatigue with this government that just can't be described, although David Brooks, on NBC this morning, came pretty close, I think:
"One of the smartest things I've read about this is that somebody wrote that is the `anti 9-11.' On 9-11, the response focused on one man, Rudy Guiliani. We saw a lot of action right away. The country felt good about itself, in that despite the catastrophe, there was the sense that we can do this stuff.
"Now it's the exact opposite. No focus of attention. No immediate action. The country feels horrible about itself because we've lost confidence in our institutions. Andrew (Sullivan) hinted at something important, which is that this isn't only about New Orleans. It's a failure of institutions: intelligence institutions, in Iraq, Halliburton, the press. We've had four or five years of constant failures of institutions, and to me what it's beginning to feel like is the 1970s, especially in Britain, where people felt a sense of malaise, a loss of confidence in the country. This is an important cultural event for that reason."
