Face Facts

The President of the United States was asked yesterday about his comment, noted here, that no one could have anticipated the breech of the New Orleans levee. A part of his reply:


“What I was referring to is this: When that storm came by, a lot of people said we dodged a bullet. When that storm came through at first, people said, Whew. There was a sense of relaxation. And that's what I was referring to.

“And I myself thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was listening to people probably over the airwaves say, The bullet has been dodged. And that was what I was referring to.”


In what benighted corner of this sorry republic are people so rock-headed to think that answer is just a-ok? I suppose there are clusters here or there, but I would suggest that that idiot’s bowl is beginning to fill up with toxic sludge that no amount of pimp - err - PUMPing will help drain.

What was especially interesting, well to me anyway, was that the above was broadcast in its entirety on NPR last night, and believe me, it sounded a lot worse than it reads, as if he were explaining something to a three-year-old whom he can’t stand. Usually the ‘liberals’ at NPR will edit down that man’s comments for the gist of perhaps what he was trying to say, or the essence of the point he otherwise stumbles around. But not last night. Last night they went real-time and we got to hear the unfiltered dimwit in all his ding-dong glory.

Check the photos from that squalid little man’s photo ops from the last couple days. Is anyone in them, besides the prez, smiling? Does anyone look glad that he is there?

It has been a practice of mine for years to look at the faces of people in the newspapers, and now on line, and divide them in half. If you do the same you will notice that, mainly, people under stress, or lying, will have weirdly unbalanced features. One side, usually the right, looks in command while the other will register everything from exhaustion to shock to grief and fear.

Give it a try; use a piece of paper.

What this means, I think, is that most people, even malicious and stupid ones, have an interior measure completely beyond their control. In fact it is especially beyond the control of people who try to control everything. What is so sad is that this probably means that most malicious and stupid people have some shred of decency somewhere inside of them that has been locked down, purged of influence and ignored. It is likely the part of themselves which they hate the most.

But I am beginning to drift here. Take a look at the president’s photos. His left side has been registering droopy dismay at least since last year’s election. Now a stark level of fear has settled on it. Even the right side has drifted now from its former action-figure resolve to something resembling unease.

The "Commander" in Brief

Four years ago I think most people in this country were proud to be Americans. Today most thoughtful ones are at least disappointed, if not embarrassed or ashamed. Nothing that useless little creep can say in Louisiana today will change that; and in the attempt to conflate these two national tragedies as a way of claiming some respect, he will appear even smaller, more petty and hateful than before.

Three more years of this is too intolerable to contemplate.

Bringing Out the Dead

People naturally are looking for some good news out of New Orleans; the administration, though not really qualifying as people, also. This probably explains the early encouraging reports on the death toll; encouraging and strangely worded. There have not been “as many” bodies found as were first feared. Here I will point out that finding half as many bodies as feared is still about 5,000 corpses. I hate to point this out too: that bodies will stay submerged in water for days until the gas produced inside the intestines makes them buoyant enough to float. I suspect the real body count will start once all the water is drained and the silted-up streets begin to be cleared. If that is in fact the case, the nightmare will last for months.

The Conservative Conundrum

The growing dismay of the conservative intelligentsia is interesting on its merits and goes beyond worry over the incompetents currently in charge. Today only the most craven supporters of that squalid little man are not calling with exponential urgency for the immediate firing of the idiots in charge of FEMA.

The nature of their unease is this: Thomas Hobbes, in his fundamental assessment of governance, The Leviathan, understood the nature of human life to be, in his memorable phrase, “nasty, brutish and short.” And that to preserve any semblance of human dignity a strict rule of law was needed. John Locke, Hobbes contemporary, added this gloss; that citizens willingly give up certain liberties to the government with the understanding that the government’s first responsibility is to keep them safe and secure.

Consider that in absolute monarchies, such as Czarist Russia and today’s North Korea, the citizen’s first duty is towards the king, requiring the citizen to lay down her life and property, if called upon to do so, to protect the sovereign. Likewise totalitarian regimes first demand sacrifice of the individual for the good of the mass. In both systems individuals are completely expendable.

This is not the case, historically anyway, in any representative government. The compact enunciated by Hobbes and Locke is the foundation of liberal democracy as well as a fundamental understanding of conservative governance.

So of course there was looting in a lawless city. Governmental order had collapsed. The numbskulls clucking over the post-Katrina violence in New Orleans do so without considering that the mayhem proves the central conservative point about government; and certainly without considering that the federal government, over the course of days last week, failed in its primary duty to all of its citizens.

Well, the nitwits reply, FEMA is only to coordinate aid at the state level. And here we come to the locus of any intelligent conservative’s main unease. Accepting this inane concept of federal assistance at face value, that a small federal government is there only to provide a necessarily limited assistance to the states, which are, basically, other small governments sovereign in their own defenses. Fine. Small governments working together, sounds great.

But then accepting that paradigm, by what right, what stretch of the totalitarian imagination, does the small federal government have any authority whatsoever to demand from states the funds and manpower to maintain an enormous army for the express purpose of projecting Washington’s power overseas? Put another way, why should that small federal government have such great military power, paid for by the states, disproportionate to its size?

And we have seen in the last two years in Iraq and in the last ten days in New Orleans the fruits of the problem of running large-scale martial projects with small-scale resources. It can’t be done. This, I propose, is what is beginning to dawn, with increasing dismay, on the real thinkers on the right.

The Headless Snake

Mendacity is always easier to take when it is combined with stupidity. The results may not be attractive to sensitive observers, but they are edifying.

from the Times of New York:
_________
Mr. Bush promised to lead an investigation into what went wron g, although a White House spokesman quickly qualified the statement, saying the inquiry would come later to avoid diverting resources from the recovery efforts.

Mr. Bush also resisted renewed calls to fire Michael D. Brown, the director of FEMA, who be came a lightning rod for attacks last week when he said he was unaware of a crisis at the New Orleans convention center, news of which had been televised for days. Instead, Mr. Bush accused critics of playing the "blame game" and said he would remain focu sed on the immediate crisis as evacuees fanned out across the country.
________

To fire the FEMA chief would reveal the nature of the entire directorate there, a zoo of fools, nothing more distinguished than advance men of the last campaign. A good loo k at the ironically named Dept. of Homeland Security will certainly expose rottenness through and through.

And let me say that I take no joy in being right. No, wait, I do; especially when it is that hideous hag, the mother of that squalid little man who proves me so.

from an interview with NPR’s Marketplace radio show:
_______
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."
_______

You know it is probably impossible for that awful woman to die of thirst, sitting in her own excrement, ignored by aid. But I would very much like to see her try.

It was interesting to note the general tone of reporting once help was finally on the “ground” in New Orleans. Quite naturally the assumption was that everything from there on out will be okay. Alas I would compare the notion to a devout wish that will shortly fall to dust. The apparatus of that squalid little man cannot - and will not - do anything right.

What we are seeing out of Washington now are the dire thrashings of a snake that has just had its head sliced off with a shovel. It will whip back and forth in a reflexive attempt to frighten away enemies; and though it may seem scary at first, it is really only disgusting and pathetic.

Do they know what it means?

The gang of incompetents leading the party in power are today desperately trying to clear some space for that squalid little man - I have vowed never to utter his name again - and though it may do to patch a leak or two, rest assured those people and perhaps their whole rotten party are doomed.

First because that squalid little man is incapable of performing outside of his controlled events, which he will have to do now or face the rage that has been cooking among most press witnesses to this obscenity. Second is that none of those partial-humans now on tour down there has the modicum of sympathy for others necessary to make their personal visits to the destitute anything other than an uncomfortable chore, which will show naturally on their faces, while they insist on their own understanding of the tragedy. The inevitable, if unintended, result will appear little better than mockery

But that is this week. And though it remains to be seen how many powerful advocates the poor can keep in the coming months, no one really has gotten around yet to accounting for the vast middle class - lower, middle and upper - who are homeless. Let me suggest that their storm is still going on and will hit the party in power in about two or three weeks. These people are, of course, the citizens of deeply mixed and connected backgrounds (and here I will note the long lines of kinship in New Orleans which have upended common notions of race and class for it’s history) who used to manage operations in our country’s largest port. They are destitute too, but far less visible now than the poor souls who began this awful journey with very little. Our nation’s main port for energy and agriculture is crippled and no one can say when it can resume anything like full operation. Cold weather begins in ernest in two months. The shit storm in congress will start a lot sooner.

No. Very shortly that squalid little man is going to look back at this morning as the good-old-days of rich photo-opportunities and bright hopes of tactical advantage.

It is interesting to consider that when disaster strikes, most organizations, especially ones previously successful, can only do what they have done in the past. That is how they see their world working, even after that world has stopped. The Titanic’s captain, once he realized that too many of the ships bulkheads were flooded, ordered the ship abandoned. Our delusional captain does not have the wit, or strength and I’d advise any decent Republicans to start heading immediately for the lifeboats.

Resignation Accepted

Some attention should be paid today to the effective end of George Bush’s presidency; finished unexpectedly this morning when he said, before live national television cameras:

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."