Here and There

I had a thought a couple of years ago, as it was becoming apparent that the military effort in Iraq was being bungled: is the US good at anything anymore?

My fear (and I apologize for its utter abjection) was confirmed by the lack of preparation and botched handling of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

What I see (and please, someone tell me I’m wrong) is an utter betrayal by the federal government of one of America’s favorite cities. The fact that the government cut funds from the maintenance of New Orleans’ levees isn’t an isolated incident, either. The Bush administration, through it’s reckless economic policy of endless tax cuts, has passed the burden on to state and local governments, themselves strained due to the slowdown that began in 2000. The “starve the beast” politics of lobbyists like Grover Norquist, once held in the fringe, now get prime play in the government’s repertoire.

The logical conclusion to starving the beast (Norquist is the one who said he’d like to shrink the government so small that it could fit in the bathtub drain), is that the beast can then no longer bear the burdens it was meant to bear. Who, then, should step up in its place? Yeah, that one wasn’t thought out.

The result: what we’re seeing in the south this week.

That thing we call “our” economy has somewhat recovered from the slowdown and 9/11 attacks, but not in any tangible way. We only recently started adding jobs at a significant rate (a growth of something like 100,000 jobs is irrelevant, as the job pool adds many more people than that every month). Meanwhile, corporate bosses are still raking it in, ostensibly due to their bringing the shareholders marginally increasing profits (the US corporation of the last five years has operated almost identically to the government: cuts costs and services. The difference is that the major companies are able to stay in the black, where the government is awash in red ink).

We’re bombarded with reports of the mishandled war in Iraq, of the failure to capture Bin Laden, of our government turning its back on the Middle East peace process, of mad cow, West Nile, avian flu, of obesity, of the lack of health care for 45 million Americans, of Detroit losing out to Japan again. And, to top it all off, we lost the Olympics to London!

What I’m waiting for/dreading is some douche bag like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, or Tom DeLay to issue some absurd statement, placing blame for the catastrophe that is Katrina on New Orleans residents, or gays and lesbians*, or Saddam. Or Clinton.

I return to the question that spurred me to post today: what is America good at anymore?

* I don’t normally like to link to sites like Repent America. My feeling is that I don’t want to be responsible for a single click groups like this get. But in this case, it’s necessary to demonstrate just how far some cuckoo clocks are already going in laying blame for the hurricane.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.