Posted on 09/03/2005 6:54:45 AM PDT by RKV
The disaster of New Orleans, unspooling minute by minute on our TV screens, has been wrenching - in one particular way even more gut-twisting than Sept. 11.
You could watch the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and feel horrified at the sheer violence and destruction of it; angry at the murderous evil of Mohammed Atta and the other hijackers; heartbroken at the awful suffering and loss. But there wasn't any cause to feel embarrassed and ashamed.
Those are the emotions evoked by sights of the massive lawlessness in New Orleans in the days after the storm and the inability of anyone to stop it. Katrina unleashed a catastrophe of nearly unimaginable proportions, confronting government at all levels with enormous challenges. That the reaction to the hurricane initially seemed uneven and slow is understandable, but even allowing for the hellish circumstances, the breakdown in civil order has been stunning.
Without order, which government exists to protect, nothing else is possible. Not even rescue operations, as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has learned. On Wednesday night, as the city descended into an urban dystopia straight out of the 1981 film ''Escape From New York,'' he had to command nearly all the city's 1,500 police officers to focus on re-establishing law and order instead of saving endangered people.
Everyone understands desperate people getting food or water by any means possible. Plundering tennis shoes and TVs, as a small thuggish minority has done, is another matter. And the problem is that there is no such thing as a little chaos. Once a climate of disorder is set, it has a logic of its own. First, it was stealing tennis shoes, then it was taking potshots at a helicopter arriving to evacuate people from the Superdome. Goons stole a bus from a nursing home and threatened its residents. Rescue workers report that rocks and bottles have been thrown at them and shots fired their way.
Unfortunately, the urban revival that had swept much of the country mostly left New Orleans behind. The atmosphere of lawfulness that stood New York City in good stead after 9/11 and during the 2003 blackout - although those were much less far-reaching disasters was never established. The city never had a Rudy Giuliani. Even as murder rates continued to decline in other cities in recent years, the murder rate in New Orleans crept up. The police were plagued by allegations of corruption and brutality, and, according to The Associated Press, only had ''3.14 officers per 1,000 residents - less than half the rate in Washington, D.C.''
Law enforcement, of course, is primarily a state and local responsibility, but in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, people look to the federal government and the president to solve any problem on their TV screens. Already the question is being asked if the feds could have jumped in sooner (the National Guard is now arriving in force). If President Bush pays a political price for the images of lawlessness that have played out in New Orleans, it will be the second time looting has hurt his cause.
The other, of course, was in Baghdad in 2003. It is a matter of consensus now that the rip-the-place-apart looting in the initial days after the fall of Saddam Hussein set the occupation off on the wrong foot. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained the looting away at the time as the natural exuberance of a newly liberated people. One wonders: Has anyone in the administration read their Hobbes? Or does he not make the ''compassionate conservative'' reading list?
New Orleans has provided a corrosive lesson about government. At all levels, government is overbearing and nagging, paying for people's prescription drugs and telling us whether we can smoke in restaurants or not. But when it comes to its most elemental task of maintaining order and protecting property, it might not be up to the task when it is needed most.
Keep that in mind and buy a gun, just in case.
West Side Story - Gee, Officer Krupke Lyrics
Gee, Officer Krupke!
Music: Leonard Bernstein/Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim
RIFF:
Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringing up-ke
That get us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks,
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!
RIFF and QUARTET:
Gee. Officer Krupke, we're very upset;
We never had the love that every child oughta get
We ain't no delinquents,
We're misunderstood,
Deep down inside us there is good!
RIFF:
There is good!
ALL:
There is good, there is good,
There's an tapped good,
Like inside, the worst of us is good.
SNOWBOY(imitating Krupke):
That's a touchin' good story!
ACTION: Lemme tell you to the world!
SNOWBOY ("Krupke"):
Just tell it to the judge!
RIFF(to "Judge"):
Dear kindly Judge, your Honor,
My parents treat me rough,
With all the marijuana,
They won't give me a puff.
They didn't wanna have me,
But somehow I was had.
Leapin' lizards, that's why I'm so bad!
DIESEL ("Judge"):
Officer Krupke, you're really a square;
This boy don't need a judge, he needs an
analyst's care!
It's just his neurosis that oughta be curbed.
He's psychologic'ly disturbed!
RIFF:
I'm disturbed!
ALL:
We're disturbed. we're disturbed,
We're the most disturbed,
Like we're psychologic'ly disturbed.
DIESEL ("Judge"):
In the opinion of this court, this child is
depraved on account
he ain't had a normal home.
RIFF: Hey, I'm depraved on account I'm deprived!
Sorry Ironjack, but who are you calling WE. WE didnt do any damage , I am not in New Orleans shooting at police or looting. WE didnt collapse beneath this thing, New Orleans lower level of citizens are to blame.
WE are doing all WE can to help.
WE are taking people into our cities even after many of them showed they couldnt behave like humans at the Super Dome.
WE are sending all the help WE can muster to help people who dont seem to be deserving of a lot of help.
You say it isnt OUR finest hour, I say when WE have watched how many in this city have behaved and still WE help them perhaps it is OUR finest hour. It is certainly not a day when I would want to be called a resident of New Orleans the Sodom on the Mississippi.
"RXACTLY!
It is a depraved city."
There is plenty of depravity to go around, coast to coast and border to border...including your area too.
Excellent work by Boortz.
I always did get it...you don't
If the shoe fits, wear it. I hate to say it, but this administration made a mistake and has admitted as such. That said, primary responsibility for order in NO is in the hands of the Mayor - and he is worse than worthless.
I am sure the mayor and the governor sleep well, unburdened as they are by the possession of a conscience.
There was no 'Snake' Pliskin... and I KNOW I ddn't see any Adrianne Barbeau's!
"will crank up the gun control crowd" - yep.
Are you part of the undercover FR detective squad? Now I guess you'll be checking my name.
I have to agree with you. What is happening in NO is NOT a national disgrace. The people of NO have disgraced themselves. Plenty of other cities have suffered in this hurricane - Biloxi to name one. You don't read reports of looting from there do you?
...........
The reason we don't read or hear about other Katrina disaster areas are due to their smaller populations. Less population , less looters, less violence, less reporting, etc. The ravenous MSM vulture media will only send their reporters to areas most populated guaranteeing them the most sensationalistic meat to ravage. N.O. is(was) largely populated. The world knows where and what N.O. is, since it's been the souths biggest tourist attraction for decades. Still, it isn't "the nations" disgrace.
Well said. I too have beans, bandages and bullets ready. More Americans need to think that way.
Yes, it does, BTW, I asked the Mod to delete my post #45 for my gross stupidity in posting it. I'm glad you did get to see it before I asked him to pull it.
Boortz is on fire!!!!! When he's on his game, nobody is better.
I'd like to know too.
One of the dirty little secrets of present day Africa that no one wants to talk or write about is that cannibalism is still widely practiced throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
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