Katrina

posted by The Vidiot @ 5:02 PM Permalink

Last year at this time, I was watching Mr. Vidiot frantically dialing his friends and family in NOLA, making sure everyone was OK. (Only one of his friends stayed behind. He survived it.) He had just come back here from a three-week visit. There was nothing he could do so far away from home. He was glued to the TV, miserable, watching the city he loved get destroyed. He said he knew it would happen one day. They all knew. They all talked about how the levees were inadequate, and the wetlands destroyed. But as it unfolded, the reality of what was happening made him morose. While Mr. Vidiot's family and friends were safe, his home town was gone. It's still gone. Last time we went back, he barely knew anybody. He used to know everybody. Mother Nature certainly had a hand in NOLA's destruction, but the aftermath, well that was just criminal.

I feel bad for Mr. Vidiot and a little envious as well. I feel bad because his home town is gone. The house he grew up in was washed away. While his family is in the suburbs, his friends are all over the place. But I'm a little envious too. I'm envious that he got to live in such a unique city and got to know it like nobody will ever know it again. I went to NOLA a few times several years ago, but due to the alcoholic hurricanes, the memory of it is somewhat of a blur. But he really knows that town... or, at least he really knew it. Who knows what it will be like once the developers swoop in like a plague, further destroying all that made NOLA unique, while manufacturing what THEY THINK will sell.

The incompetence of the local, state and federal governments didn't surprise him much, and he wasn't all that surprised at how overt and callous they behaved towards the lowest strata of class. I, on the other hand, was shocked as hell. One year later though, I'm not so shocked any more and I've begun to notice even bigger cracks in our social structures. Katrina was the beginning of my awareness. Before Katrina, I thought that it was possible to make government work, that we just needed the right people. That's why I worked for candidates and fought against Bush et al. But now, I'm beginning to think government is the problem, or, at least, OUR government.

I don't know what the solutions are, but one year post-Katrina and before another disaster occurs -- whether real or manufactured -- we'd better start working some of them out before there are more innocent victims.