Why America can't cope

[Briar]

Why America can't cope

There are deeper explanations for the New Orleans catastrophe than anyone has dared suggest, writes Andrew Stephen. The roots lie in America's deluded self-image



We know, now, that there was not even a Prescott in charge in Washington. President Bush was exorcising heaven-knows-what demons by furiously riding his mountain bike in Texas - nobody, not even the Secret Service or a visiting Lance Armstrong, is allowed to pass him - while Vice-President Cheney was fly-fishing in Wyoming. Condoleezza Rice, next in charge, was shopping for shoes at Ferragamo's and watching Spamalot on Broadway and catching the US Open in New York; while Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, who is supposed to keep it all together, was taking in the sea breeze with much of the rest of the Bush crowd in Maine.

Rats gnawing at corpses floating down the streets three days after Katrina struck, bodies left to decompose in the stairwells of New Orleans's main hospital because its basement mortuary was flooded, tens of thousands still trapped, hungry and thirsty: only then did the inquests into what the Los Angeles Times called the "surreal foreignness" of it all start. But then the questioning was imbued with a peculiarly American self-righteousness and aggressive need to pin blame on the guilty: on the inattentiveness of the Bush administration, its lack of foresight, the racial and class divisions within the US, and so on.

... nobody, as far as I can see, has dared to suggest that there are deeper explanations for so disconcerting a shambles, explanations that transcend political parties or individuals. The self-image of America, now largely adopted in Britain, too, is that of a nation of uniquely hardy and resilient people predestined by God to be omnipotent in the world, be it against the forces of nature or of bogeyman dictators.
...

To Americans, these lessons of Katrina - that their country may still be the world's military superpower, but it is neither all-powerful nor even particularly efficient at home - will be hard to absorb. Perhaps they will prove simply too humbling; perhaps there will be an impetus back towards isolationism, to pour more resources into strengthening life at home rather than trying to put the rest of the world to rights. The nation is nurtured on tales that America is paradise on earth but the reality is that it is increasingly falling behind western Europe in technology, education and healthcare - not to mention the kind of emergency and evacuation procedures and disaster preparedness needed to respond to Hurricane Katrina. A predictable natural calamity which inconveniently failed to fit in with the preordained scripts of this most cynical of US administrations has brutally exposed America's shortcomings.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200509120004

[rfranklin]

1. I think that is a fair assessment...

I find it harder not to laugh each time I hear some blowhard talking about "thre greatest nation on earth." Especially when we have so many people living in poverty. Such a chaotic health care system. Such a disparity between the haves and the have nots. So much corruption in government, i.e. Halliburton.

I lived overseas when I was growing up and saw endemic corruption and always thought, well, it's not like that in the U.S. Living long has made me wiser.

[DELUSIONAL]

4. living and traveling overseas gives you a different perspective

too bad more Americans don't travel overseas -- or even outside of their own state.

America really is a third world Nation in many ways -- health care and transportation system, plus housing are the ones the come immediately to mind.

I wish I could remember the name of a book about the slums of Brazil, written by a women who lived and survived in the slums.

We are in deep trouble and Katrina exposed our dirty little secrets.

[KG]

2. the US: a land where myth is sacred, and the truth profane.

[pippin]

3. Decaying Infrastructure

"The decay of the nation's infrastructure thus continues apace. If there is no strong government, there is, of course, no one to supervise quality control. "

Tax cuts and Iraq have sucked this country dry: When will the repugs realize that there is no free lunch? No doubt about it the delusion is over: Hell we are not only "behind western Europe in technology, education and healthcare - not to mention the kind of emergency and evacuation procedures and disaster preparedness- " but a whole lot of other countries we've traditionally thought of as "third world" nations.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. * must have been the result of the ultimate voo-doo curse on this country.

[teryang]

6. The national welfare is as far from the minds of the "have mores" as...

...an honest day's labor. They are too busy calculating the lucre from their next financial scam be it an elective war with associated profiteering, shifting their taxes onto working people or stealing someone's pension funds.