dripping from a dead dog’s eye[1].
I didn’t talk about this earlier because I was concerned about coming off as a heartless prick. Now I’ve come to the conclusion it doesn’t matter how I sound. I will follow the herd and do what so many other people in this country do each day, confuse “freedom of speech” with the ability to say whatever they want, whenever they want, at whosever’s expense.
It is probably prudent, however, that I begin with this warning. This post is potentially racist, insensitive and proceeds to kick people who’re already down, as Eric Cartman oft eloquently puts it, “squa’ in the nuts”.
If you don’t want to read this sort of thing, don’t.
In the aftermath of the recent hurricane “Katrina” (like giving it a euphonious woman’s name makes a natural disaster more palatable), I heard numerous reporters look at the horrible state of affairs and exclaim “We’re not Somalia or some third world country damn it, we’re America”.
Honestly, from the footage and reports I saw, it wasn’t apparent. Shops and homes being mercilessly looted, children and adults being raped, they being shot at and killed, needy elderly and babies dying from lack of help, people starving to death in piles of their own waste. For a casual observer, this might just as well have been Somalia[2]—a Somalia where it is easy for people to break into hardware stores and steal firearms.
I’ll make two separate statements now, and you connect them in any way you want.
1. Almost every single person you see in the dilapidated condition described above is black.
2. When I was in Louisiana earlier this summer, I couldn’t help but notice how—and I kid you not—EVERY SINGLE person below a certain socio-economic standard was black.
People in this country cringe every time they hear the word “communism”. This, my dearies, is a direct consequence of your beloved capitalism, unintelligently coupled with remnants of the effects of years of racism. You have a clear (and growing) dichotomy, you proceed to encourage it with your tax cuts for the rich and the wars draining billions from cash starved job training, health and education programmes.
And this is what you get. An intelligent warning system after tons of somewhat-accurate numerical simulations perhaps, but people too poor to have access to means to get out in time. Said people devastated and driven to desperation by natural forces, and then what? Your free-access-to-guns policies result in these people breaking into hardware stores and stealing weapons.
Couple this with the woefully slow response, the pace of which is incorrectly attributed to the fact that the afflicted people are black, but is really due to this country’s incompetence and policies—like the much famed war occupying most of the troops’ attention.
Rampant anarchy and lawlessness is sure to ensue.
And it’s all poor people. Almost all black.
You made them that way. These people may be criminals, but your society set the stage for their crimes.
Peeves follow:
1. My country is very poor, and it sees its fair share of natural disasters on a regular basis. But you know what? At least people don’t resort to stealing weapons and helping themselves to other people’s property. They—people who weren’t EVEN WARNED of events on much larger scale, like a large Tsunami—don’t get angered by authorities trying to help them.
Shooting at helicopters trying to rush to your aid? Whatever your current condition, you have no fucking right to be angry at those who are trying to give you a helping hand. If I were a paramedic or whatever trying to help a group, and they shot at my craft, I would most vehemently let them all die.
Ungrateful maniacs.
2. Oh, media people, just don’t use words like “spectacular” for describing the scale of horrifying events. Learn to use a thesaurus and pick similar words, but with negative connotations. How about, say, cataclysmic?
3. Why the fuck is ICE so important? We gave these people food, and water, AND ICE. Why?
4. And why doesn’t anybody get that none of this has anything to do with being an advanced nation or a third world nation? Or race? The only cause is that people, in general, take things for granted and don’t think forward enough. All goals are short term. All topics are short lived.
Just watch, 6 months or so down the line, none of these events will seem all that important, at least to the rest of us, and we will go back to building our easy-to-break levee systems.
[1] Lyrics stolen from The Beatles’ “I Am The Walrus” from their album “Magical Mystery Tour”.
[2] Not that I’m implying this is how I imagine Somalia to be. You know what I mean.
