Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works

There isn't always a reason.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

If you're a victim, you won't survive.

As I watched real-time radar images of hurricane Katrina bearing down on New Orleans, I thought of how unusual it is to have a natural disaster give us time to get out of the way. I only wished I had stopped myself from making news inquiries, but instead, over the past few days, I continued to fill my insatiable hunger for news on the devastation left in the trail of hurricane Katrina. Soon I found myself yelling at German newspapers as columnists there saw fit to preen and crow at the latest American disaster by saying we deserved it because of global warming.

"Go engineer a car or raise up a dictator!" I hollered at the screen, angrily clicking my mouse. "That's what you Germans do best!"

Then I read reports of the world's amazement and judgment on this nation because of the actions and response to the disaster. "We are more civilized in Indonesia because after the tsunami we helped each other," one Indonesian man told a reporter. "America deserves this disaster because (fill in the blank here for anything we've been involved in in the past 200 years)". The writer of these types of articles had not trouble finding a man on the street from just about every country willing to bash our country and President Bush.

I began hollering at my computer screen again.

It is because America is so uncivilized that the civilians have formed numerous websites to offer their homes to refugees. It is because America is so uncivilized that a record amount of money - surpassing even the tsunami donations - was raised in just under a week. It is because America is so uncivilized and lawless that the rest of this massively huge country continues to function and go about their business with heavy hearts and open wallets. Talk about your neanderthal societies. Are the looters, the catastrophe, and disaster in one city a mirror for all Americans, then?

No. Perhaps a slight revelation into true fallen human nature, but not something unique to Americans. Unfortunately, these events have become an excuse for tall poppy syndrome from anyone who needs an excuse to hate America, hate an opposing political party, or are in need of ammunition for the next election, golf junket or their own 15 minutes of personal gain. Unbiased concepts are eschewed in favor of cherry picking facts to support the blame game. After all, the blame game is needed to fill the columns in the newspapers, fill the blogs, and fill the air time on TV and radio.

I keep hearing how there has never been a disaster like this in the US, that this is the disaster to end all disasters. That is the arrogance of one generation not comprehending the trials of the generations before it.

When you have a 24-hour news channel, and then have three or four such channels, you have to fill the air and every disaster, abduction and event has to be the end of all ends. Would Galveston's 1900 hurricane have been the worst thing ever? The earthquake of '04? How would Hurricane Andrew be covered differently in today's media climate, which took three times longer for the government to respond to than aid to Katrina? The great Boston molasses tragedy of 1919? The Long Island Express hurricane of 1938? The 1972 earthquake in Managua that forced millions of people into stadiums, parks and schools? The flu pandemic of 1918? The fall of Rome? Pompeii? The tsunami that nearly liquefied part of Alaska's coast in 1964? The world and this country went on then as it will now, though all of those were horrific events that had nothing to do with race or politics. No one country or nationality will ever be exempt from horror. Citizenship and tax-paying status really guarantees nothing. In a week, it could be my turn. If I weren't hearing and reading about what had happened everywhere I turned, I would not feel as if the sky were falling.

Randall Robinson writes how his faith in peace between the races is forever altered, as if it wasn't facetious that a man who writes a book on what whites owed African Americans ever had any such hopes. The media is filled with dire predictions of an entire country just on the edge of tottering into the brink. Rising gas prices! Recession! Unemployment! Anarchy! Despair! Looting! Rage! We'll never recover! We've never seen anything like it! We must impeach Bush!

The general public, whipped into a frenzy by all these reports and already struggling with concern and strong desire to help, are all but ready to leap from the windows on Wall Street. This country will never be the same again! we hear, and find it easy to feel fear when we see gas prices jump and thousands of people in agony and dying along the gulf.

We'll never be the same again? Really? Kind of like how 9-11 so changed the country that a few short years later we're as greedy as ever, as quick to complain as ever, as petty as ever, as disrespectful to police as ever, our TV shows and entertainment are still as shallow as before, and politicians still bitterly gnashing at each other's throats - kind of like that? Unfortunately, I don't think this will change our country forever. I wish it would, but it won't. The sky falling makes a better news story and so we all get run through the ringer of Emotions for Neilsen Points yet again.

Oh, but the hollering is loud now, from all sides and from all people, the blame for a supposed natural disaster leaning towards anything but nature. The levees weren't funded by Bush. They weren't high enough. You shouldn't build under sea level. You shouldn't be in Iraq. An arrogant country gets their just rewards. You use too much gas. That's what you get for the divide between rich and poor. That's what you get for there being haves and have nots. That's what you get for being racist. It's the federal government's fault and in no way a state or city's fault for not enforcing a "forced" evacuation, leaving buses to molder in bacterial sludge three days later, useless. It's the president's fault. It's Halliburton's fault. There's a conspiracy between oil companies and politicians. It's because we abuse the environment. It's because Allah hates America that this happened and in no way connected to natural weather patterns and the law of gravity that demands water run downhill. No. Allah or Mother Nature or Conspiracy Theorists or Howard Dean or The Skulls have willed it somehow because there simply must be a cause and effect for the logical human mind to accept and understand horror such as this. There must be a reason!

Is there a reason for the hurricanes that do not strike land and die out in the ocean? Is there a reason for tornadoes that sometimes hit and sometimes miss? Is there a reason for one thunderstorm doing little damage and another wiping out farms? Is there a reason for all the years New Orleans wasn't struck with a hurricane? Is there a reason for the bad as well as the good? I wonder how our outlook would change if we ever realized the many near misses in our lives that we never know about.

But the spectacle doesn't end there. Once the blame game starts, the photo-op sessions and grab for higher political poll points comes next.

We have the good Reverend Jesse Jackson arriving on a horrific scene under a crowded underpass bursting with desperate evacuees, sporting a crisp suit coat with camera man in tow, busily spouting out the failings of the president and how this place, where the evacuees were stranded, was the belly of the slave ship. He was doing his part, you know, to make the situation better and give people hope. He also had a number of good photo opportunities.

The good Rev. Jackson would do well to remember that a truly good leader does not allow his followers to wallow in victimhood, does not encourage them in this path. A good leader demands they take a higher road, one towards hope, and helps them do it. Instead, we have Jackson complaining that the federal government is racist because there was no national plan of disaster to evacuate the people before the storm hit. If he could explain why the state and city shouldn't be responsible for their own plan, I'd welcome it.

I take it as an assault on me as well when the racism card, the conservative card, the selfish American card is thrown. I just donated money, the only tangible thing I can do right now from across the country, and these people are insulting me and my intentions.

When homewreaker Angelina Jolie, momentarily functioning as the UN Goodwill Ambassador instead of stealing husbands, finds the strength to speak out against the too-slow relief efforts being made despite the celebrities' fund raising efforts not taking place until nearly after-the-fact during which we are informed that George Bush doesn't care about black people by Kanye West while us ordinary folks and evil corporations chipped up millions of dollars for relief within days, I get a little irritated.

Journalist Chris Bury filed a report for Nightline on Sept. 2 that contained not one, not two, but at least four scenes and sound bites in which the president was blamed. Bury himself threw in every jab he could get along these lines into the report. I grew more disgusted by the moment, trying to keep my compassion despite all the insults and accusations of racism and hatred directed at the president I voted for and still support. Though I do not think any political person a saint, President Bush included, I don't see how Bush personally is responsible for every failure we've seen in the relief efforts. The contributing factors the the extent of the destruction began earlier than 2000. Developers, lax concern over storms because of a lull in serious storms between 1969 to 1989 have had a hand to play. Dredging the Mississippi, destruction of marshes, the Army Corps, building things on the cheap -- they all had a hand to play in the current state of the situation. It isn't just President Bush. If you're going to place blame, do it equally. If mayor Giuliani, and not President Bush, got the credit on 9-11 for successfully handling that crisis, shouldn't mayor Nagin of New Orleans get the negative version for a huge mishandling of the crisis instead of Bush? The mayor is in charge of the city, not the federal government. Having a poor emergency plan is no one's fault but the mayor and city council and state governments involved.

Ted Koppel threw me a surprise following Bury's one-sided report, interviewing one of three trillion Democrat politicians from Louisiana, cutting him off at every turn as he never answered a direct question thrown at him. The politician instead choose to repeat how he was working to get food the parishes he represented and blame President Bush. Koppel pointed out the ineptitude of the state and local politicians in Louisiana, and made the fine but not delicate point that unless the governor asks for specific help, federal troops just can't come in and take over. You'd think the Patriot Act haters would appreciate that perspective.

Posse Comitatus, anyone? Are there people seriously suggesting the military and the federal government should rush into a state and take over operations without specific invitation and instructions by this supposedly independently governed state? Shall a precedent be started where such action occurs whenever the federal government deems it necessary, whether a state requests such help or not?

The politician interviewed by Koppel continued to sputter and stumble until he could find his comfortable and familiar ground of pinning it all on the failure of President Bush. I confess, my first thought of Louisiana politicians isn't one of genius and honesty. I admit falling for a stereotype. Perhaps Koppel thought as much, though, as went after the politician again and again without letting up, asking the politician to clarify his understanding of the need for a state governor to make a specific request of federal help. All the politician could say was that federal and military personnel should just have known to come in and do their thing without having been specifically asked and given specific missions.

It is this assumptive and psychic form of communication that would explain the communication disaster that has led to the human misery now seen.

Perhaps this is how it's done in New Orleans. Everyone on TV keeps celebrating the culture of New Orleans, the party atmosphere and how laid back it is, how wonderful a lifestyle it is. Maybe that laid-back party-hearty look at life doesn't hold up well in a disaster where leadership and discipline and responsibility on the part of the elected local and state officials is needed. But again, maybe that's just how it's done. It's too bad the world is seeing that as a summation of the nation.

I don't understand how the relief efforts could have gone as badly as they did, how communication and planning for a predicted predicament could be non-existent when so many times in the past during other natural disasters in this nation, under this president and others, the same can't be said. If I had the power to somehow help every single person whose lives were ruined by this disaster, and if I could get them all to safety and comfort, I would. Just as the rest of the nation would to, I'm sure. Instead, I am hamstrung and forced to choose to turn the pot-stirring news off and simply donate money and pray continuously. It isn't a question of how awful it is for Americans to be experiencing the horror these people are experiencing, but one of how no human being on earth, American or not, should have to face this.

This post isn't a question of good intentions and my compassion. It's one on the cacophony of ulterior motives that has surfaced.

No matter all the name calling and political fallout, it comes down to this: a tropical depression turned into a hurricane and did what had for years been predicted would happen to a city literally built in a bowl. Because we simply cannot see into the future, we can only comment on what we see and guess at the causes of what is going on now. History is a bit cruel in only allowing us to see the complete picture about twenty years after we really need it. One year down the road, there will be a new crisis that draws our attention and panic and has Greta Van Sustern all a tither.

Once we all, including me, quit pointing fingers and blaming FEMA and the mayor and the governor and the rich and the white and the poor and the media and everyone else around, we finally get our act together.

We would be better off if we all changed our mindset and decided to not put our faith in FEMA or the Red Cross or social security or the company health plan or the National Guard. We would be better off if we quit feeling entitled to a certain existence. We would be better off if we quit waiting around for someone else to make us safe and instead took the situation we are stuck in and made it work to the best with what we have. The failings of our leaders, from federal to local to military, should serve as an eye opener. Put not your trust in man.

We would be better off when we realized that in a huge disaster, people will die, even Americans, because we are no more special than the people of Bangledesh, just more comfortable.

We would be better if, in a need to vent, we reserved our anger for the lawlessness and how it has caused would-be rescuers to now treat people like animals, suspicious of motives, instead of the political people we hate. Egging on the crowds with cries of slave ships and making excuses certainly won't turn the focus to the lawbreakers and how badly poor behavior has hampered and damaged the rescue effort.

We would be better off if we didn't assume the government and the military had their act perfectly together and somehow would not be hampered by nature, bureaucratic red tape and the laws of physics. It would at least make us less likely to be victims because we wouldn't be thinking that we were. We would realize that what or who saves us probably won't wear a uniform or have government forms to fill out, followed by money. We would have to help each other instead of looking out for number one until the Red Cross arrived.

Some of the people you see on TV are survivors and some are victims. The difference is in their head and is easily seen in how they react. The survivors will naturally survive. The victims will never forgive whoever happens to be on their usual list of suspects to blame, and their lives will be permanently stuck on page Hurricane Katrina as an excuse for their future until the day they die. They won't survive this, though they will live.

So what do we do then? Shall we just let nature take its course in all things?

Of course not. We build levees, and if the levees fail, we rebuild them and higher. And we acknowledge that there is no place we can live where we are free from nature's wrath in the many forms it takes, and that we do not ever win against nature but we do keep fighting.

And we also shoot looters. Or at least we should. Except Jabbor Gibson.