George Bush hates people

There’s something pointedly touching about the notion of an otherwise cocky popular musician at the top of their game twitching nervously before their first ‘political’ statement. When Kanye West went off script during an NBC telethon a week and a half ago, the American media presented the first authentic emotional response to Katrina. The second came the following week when, during a live interview on CNN, a passerby told Dick Chaney to go fuck himself. This earnestness spoke volumes about the power and influence of traditional media. It was almost as though the media outlets had opened themselves to become the voice of the people. Almost.

Let’s not blame the Bush administration wholly for this little debacle, even though his evil policies are destroying the country. I’ll be the first to point out that this may sound a little hypocritical coming from a person who published an article with the title George Bush Isn’t Evil. And I stand by this comment to this very day. Once again, he is merely a figurehead, a symbol of the collective ideologies that are driving America into the void. There was little public outcry as the White House slashed the budget of the Army Engineer Corps – you know, those guys who keep the levees operational in New Orleans. Neither did anyone complain when the Environmental Protection Agency had its mandate changed, as private companies decimated thousands of square kilometres of Louisiana’s wetlands, which would have served to absorb a great deal of the flooding (Google “Mr Bill + wetlands”...). Few Americans seem to be questioning the environmental repercussions of their consumptive lifestyles, which serve to promote climate change and increase the likelihood of extreme weather effects like hurricanes. And nobody questioned the intelligence of cutting governmental programs like disaster management. People enjoyed their tax cuts and their ability to buy bigger cars and more stuff.

In retrospect, all that so called ‘conservative’ fiscal policy smells of so much shit from a dying bull. The public as a political concept is indeed an important thing. Cities get built by people in unison, however randomly and sporadically that may occur. Contrary to the current political zeitgeist of much of North America, they do not get built by corporate strategic policy. On the contrary, corporate policies of late have centred upon raiding the public purse as the last exit strategy for profit margins.

Of course natural disasters can and do happen and are largely outside of our control, and the suffering that precipitates can indeed be tragic and long-lasting. Since civilization tends to operate akin to an archive of information, it seems appropriate to use the wealth of such knowledge and productivity to mitigate against the consequences of such disasters when they do happen.

There has been much talk in the press about why state and federal authorities did not adequately prepare for Katrina, a storm which had been well tracked by meteorological officials for several days. It was widely known that an exceptionally massive category 5 hurricane would hit the Gulf coast and make landfall. And yet no preparations were made. No sandbags or national guardsmen were deployed. No emergency food or medical supplies were stockpiled for rapid dissemination. Instead, the citizens of Louisiana were given the gold ol’ American spirit of independence. Official strategy: good luck and god bless, but to each their own.

When that strategy of independence, ie: brute survival, turned on the American dream of law and due process, adherents were called “looters” and criminals, and were immediately placed under martial law. How dare they take what is not their’s, we were told by the news media. The consequence of this action was not solely the deaths of several looters – ie black people, white looters being called ‘scavengers’ and ‘finders’ – but also Kanye West’s vitriolic response. Hey, desperate people do desperate things; that’s the reason why public institutions are needed. If funded properly, they serve to keep people from being as desperate as they might be on their own.

Ah, looting; there’s the rub. Remembering the joyful operations in Iraq, Louisiana governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco – hey, Blanco likes black people, right? – issued the following warning to ‘looters’: “These troops are fresh back from Iraq. They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary.” That’s right. While every public service that citizens depend on has been cut back to the gristle, Americans should feel secure in the knowledge that their National Guard will protect them.

After the political fallout of governmental inaction, the horrors that the Bush administration has in store for Louisiana are becoming ever more clear. First volley: the biggest reconstruction contracts are going to the Shaw Group and Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. The companies who are “reconstructing” war-torn Iraq are also going to make millions of dollars reconstructing Louisiana and Mississippi. Nobody should second-guess the priorities of this administration when it was announced that the first projects of reconstruction are naval bases and corporate properties.

Second volley: Bush suspended a Depression-era bill which protects worker wages for governmental contracts. This would allow the companies mentioned above to pay their workers minimum wage for their services, rather than the market rates for construction and related projects.

So to summarize: the Bush admin thinks that the free market is the best solution to governmental projects and consequently guts public institutions, then uses its power of legislation to alter the free market to ameliorate the profit potential of the companies involved. Can you guess who are the winners in this strategy?

Maybe I’m woefully amateur to be saying so, but how about a program which provides the people of Louisiana the resources to build their own communities back up. If they are being fed and sheltered, they would probably jump all over the employment opportunity. Obviously not everyone can help, but I’m sure that many among the hundreds of thousands of newly dispossessed would be willing to help reconstruct their cities as best as they could.

Instead, a few private companies get to gain; their commission is the misery of half a million people. The enormous costs of reconstruction are being added directly to the deficit, already bloated beyond belief by the cost of military operations in the Middle East. My own cynical armchair interpretation of the economic situation in the States is that the Bush administration wants to force the country into a recession. As the economic situation worsens in America, fewer people might be in opposition to the possibility of conscription into military theatres.

But again, that’s me flying off the handle. Bush is doing the best job that he can, which is to be the mirror-as-leader for America. People don’t want to pay taxes. They distrust governmental programmes and want the best opportunities to improve their own economic situations, community spirit be damned. That spirit of America was shown in full force with the preparedness and response to Hurricane Katrina, which the day after the hurricane saw the President strumming his guitar like Nero while Rome burned.

As a fun non-sequitur, Katrina is serving as a nice media diversion from the fact that a little piece of paper entitled “Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations” is reaching final approval from Donald Rumsfeld. It would allow a preemptive nuclear strike against whoever the White House deems a threat, and “revises the discussion of nuclear weapons use across the range of military operations.” Maybe they’re thinking that the use of nuclear arms would deter further hurricanes from stupidly and arrogantly threatening the U.S. Take that, Hurricane Iraq!