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 Editorials | At Issue | September 2005 
Tragedy in New Orleans, Torpor in Washington:
Katrina Exposes Ugly Aspects of Bush and America
 Max J. Castro - The Progreso Weekly
| | As part of the system to collect and identify the bodies of people who died in Hurricane Katrina, a body-collection point has been established in Saint Bernard Parish, according to the state Department of Health and Hospitals. (Photo: Times-Picayune) |
The sociologist Peter L. Berger once described how the World War II German bombing of London, which destroyed the walls and facades that in normal times shield private lives from public view, laid bare strange and sometimes unspeakable realities. Like those bombs some 60 years ago, the assault of wind and water that struck New Orleans with deadly fury in late August exposed harsh and hidden truths about the workings of American society today.
Hidden in plain sight, for it is hardly a secret that, in fair weather and in foul, there exists a strong correlation between class, color and life expectancy.
It doesn't take a storm; a vicious hurricane only makes the relation between status and longevity much more dramatic and visible. On average, and from the moment of birth, minorities and the poor in the United States are more likely to die prematurely - no matter the weather. Katrina amplified this brutal social fact amply confirmed by myriad studies, the strong correlation between social stratification and the odds of life and death. The media's glare magnified it and placed it in stark relief.
Absent a disaster, mortal disparities fail to attract much media attention or generate significant public outrage. As for our current political leadership, the good news is that earlier this year President George W. Bush did take notice that blacks have lower-than-average life expectancy. The bad news is that that the President did not cite that statistic in the context of a plan to increase black longevity but instead used it as part of a deceptive campaign to persuade blacks that social security is a bad deal for them.
That is a lie. Blacks do collect less after 65 years of age because of lower life expectancy but more under the disability and survivor's components of social security because of higher mortality and morbidity before 65. The point, however, beyond the dishonesty of the argument and its breathtaking cynicism is this: How can an administration that is well aware of the racial gap in the calculus of life and death and proposes to do nothing about it, now except to exploit it politically, which envisions that nothing will be done about it into the far future, be expected to suddenly acquire a life-saving sense of urgency at the sight of black people on the rooftops and the flooded streets of New Orleans?
It is not merely an emotional outburst when a top rap singer says on national television that George Bush doesn't care about black people; it's a solid argument backed not just by the evidence of the past few days but also by the policies of the last five and a half years.
The aftermath of Katrina, as captured by the video images and in the massive media coverage, crystallized not only the racial but also the socioeconomic chasm that has been widening for more than two decades and has been aggravated by this administration's class war for the rich against the poor.
Many Americans reacted with shock and indignation to the sight of desperate fellow citizens trapped in New Orleans and in danger of dying because of a lackadaisical response by the federal government and the Bush administration. The embarrassment that many felt that the chaos in New Orleans made the United States look like a Third World country betrays a massive public denial about what has been happening in this country for many years. For several decades now, a Third World within has grown and developed as a product both of economic trends and government policies. This made-in-the USA Third World made up not just of immigrants but mainly of home-grown minorities and working class whites, was especially large in New Orleans, a city with a huge population of African-Americans and low-wage workers of all races, the groups most adversely affected by the reactionary socioeconomic policies of Reagan and the two Bushes (and, to a lesser but significant extent, by Clinton's opportunist social policy concessions to the right).
The fact that so many in New Orleans did not have the means - working cars and money for meals, gas and hotel rooms - to escape the monster storm bearing down on the city reflects not only the high rates of poverty in one city but also the huge economic inequalities in the country today.
Many workers in New Orleans' hotel and restaurant industry earn at or just above the national minimum wage, which has remained at $5.15 since 1996 despite inflation that has steadily decreased in real value. While workers' wages have fallen, the incomes of their bosses have soared. According to a recent study by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, CEO's in 367 large corporations on average now receive an astonishing $431 for every dollar earned by the typical production worker.
Even more tellingly, if the minimum wage had kept up with the rising tide of executive pay since 1990, the lowest paid workers would be earning $23.30 an hour today, more than four times what they are really making. Workers who earn $23 an hour typically have reliable transportation, credit cards, savings - in other words the wherewithal to pick up and go. Workers who make $5 barely get by and don't have the means to move. They have to stay put and risk death. The same goes for the unemployed and for especially vulnerable groups such as the sick and the frailest of the elderly. These are the desperate, stranded people we have seen on TV, who make up a significant percentage of the population of New Orleans. Their plight is no accident: This administration and the Republican Congress have torpedoed all attempts to raise the minimum wage and have been miserly when it comes to funding for the most vulnerable groups in our nation.
If the differential toll of Katrina says something about the nature of U.S. society and this administration's priorities, the belated and ineffective federal response also speaks volumes about the Bush administration's sheer ineptitude. That ineptitude has been in evidence in the tragedy of errors that has been the Iraq adventure, marked by wrongheaded and wishful thinking, the triumph of ideology over reality, lack of planning, underestimation of the human and material resources necessary to accomplish the mission, and behind-the-curve responses to the challenges on the ground.
But Iraq is a foreign, complex, alien enemy world, and the American people were willing for a long time to give the administration a break or else to avert their eyes in order to avoid appearing unpatriotic. Then, too, the vast majority of the victims of the chaos created in Iraq by the invasion and the occupation are Iraqis, including the 1,000 that died in late August when a false rumor turned a Shiite procession into a lethal stampede.
None of this applies to New Orleans and the Louisiana and Mississippi gulf coasts. Not that George W. Bush has taken full notice of this fact; on his belated inspection tour, the President twice referred to the citizens of the affected area as "people in this part of the world" as if they were inhabitants of a distant country. But, for once, the mainstream media and the American people have not bought it and instead have taken notice of the reality - and with a vengeance. This time the administration's incompetence has come in the full glare of the media's constant coverage and in plain view of the American people, which have made its usual excuses and spinning quite useless.
The result has been an avalanche of sharp criticism from far and wide. On the ground, seasoned television journalists covering the disaster sometimes could not contain their grief or disguise their shock and outrage at the catastrophically sluggish official response in the face of widespread suffering and imminent death. The right-wing pundits who usually try to deflect all criticism of the Bush administration by writing it off as the work of leftist fringe groups and the "liberal media" are not likely to get away with that this time. Elite media such as The New York Times have lambasted Bush over the lagging federal response, but middle-of-the-road newspapers have been just as scathing. For example, this is what the South Florida Sun-Sentinel said in an editorial worth quoting at length:
And then there is President Bush, our minister of vacations. As early as last Sunday morning, the whole world knew a catastrophe was bearing down on the Gulf Coast. Yet our "leader" remained at his Texas ranch, no doubt "clearing brush." On Tuesday, two days after the catastrophe was anticipated and one day after it actually occurred, Bush was in California, strumming a guitar to celebrate the 60th anniversary of V-J Day.
If only hurricanes were wars, maybe Bush could have gotten worked up over Katrina. Instead, he was so un-worked up that he didn't make it to the stricken region until Friday, three days too late to show the kind of leadership desperate people desperately needed.
Here's a question every American should be asking. This president was re-elected because voters believed he was the best person to protect the nation from terrorism and its consequences. Yet here was a storm that struck with plenty of warning, and the federal response has been worse than pathetic. What can we expect in the event of a major terrorist attack, which would come without warning?
For its part, the Times-Picayune, the local New Orleans newspaper, has called for President Bush to fire the entire leadership of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). That is not surprising since the crisis has exposed not only the formerly independent agency's inefficiency as a result of having been made an appendage of the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 but also the fact that its director is a political appointee with no experience in emergency management. As in Iraq, where prior to the invasion the administration dismissed its own experts in favor of hard-core fanatics, which led to disastrous miscalculations that have cost many lives, with FEMA the administration played politics with the safety of the American people by replacing professional emergency managers with political hacks.
The results of the Bush administration's relentless politicization of the government and its nearly obsessive focus on Iraq and homeland security to the neglect of preparedness for natural disasters now have become obvious. With FEMA receiving a miniscule part of the budget for homeland security and the National Guard and the military more than fully committed to the Iraq mission, it would have taken an extraordinary exercise in political leadership at the very top to quickly mobilize the necessary resources to respond to a catastrophe of the magnitude of Katrina.
That kind of leadership was not forthcoming from President Bush, who failed to overrule the obvious resistance of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld early on to engage the only entity in the country capable of responding quickly and effectively to avert a great human tragedy: the U.S. military.
Secretary Rumsfeld's early statements implied that he did not want a trivial thing like a hurricane to distract the armed forces from the administration's messianic mission in Iraq and elsewhere. Rumsfeld's attitude toward the emergency created by Katrina recalls what he said in response to the evangelist Pat Robertson's suggestion that the United States should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez: "Our department doesn't do that sort of thing."
This administration's disgracefully slow and failed response to Katrina could not have come at a worse time for President Bush. The long grace period that the media and the American people have been willing to grant the President on Iraq has come to an end as a result of the accumulation of casualties and of trumpeted turning points and successes that later have been revealed to have been dead ends. Before Katrina the Bush's approval ratings had already sunk to a new low. The abysmal and shameful performance of the President and his administration in the face of this enormous national tragedy may be the last straw for those Americans who, until now, had been willing to give the Commander-in-Chief the benefit of the doubt. |
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