My City of Ruins

Whilst immersed in my conference the first few days of this week, Hurricane Katrina was a peripheral happening, one of the many ferocities that nature dreams up for the southern United States every year. As we spent three days speaking of new ideas and directions, meeting each other and checking voicemail in the in betweens, "that big storm" (as was the term used most often) began to emerge as something much more sinister by the time we finished.

We had thought it was bad on Monday when reports were coming out saying 55 people had died.

Birth to the present, and we've now spent a nearly a week awaking daily to yet more headlines indicating that what couldn't possibly get worse, has, and that the hope of the New Orleans populace is steadily sinking lower than their city has over the past 30 years. (Apparently some good folks at the Army Corps of Engineers knew about this, but you know that pesky funding for the levies just never seemed to be a priority.)

I spent some time today on websites, listening not once, but twice to Mayor Nagin of New Orleans rage against the Bush machine. (The irony of having to watch an army recruitment ad before listening to it was palpable. CNN Programming? HEEELLLOOOO??) Nagin didn't identify the elephant in the room, so much as herd them into a pen and name 'em all. Hell, he could probably tell you each one's favourite food. It was the kind of bravery that elicited both my admiration and sympathy, a bravery borne of the desperation of the most dangerous man in the game: the one with nothing left to lose.

I couldn't escape how much of an anomaly Nagin was. Why? Because somebody, finally, was actually spelling it out and taking the Bush Administration to task. There was no "spin".

Conversely, I can only surmise that the media's attention on the "blistering criticism" of the Bush Administration is the work of a bunch of cowards. No one in the media is running scared because they don't have to. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the inability of the United States government to respond to it is the result of the Bush Administration's simplistic, jingoistic and marginalizing way of dealing with everything writ large. There can be no denial of this. What's so enraging is that Katrina's devastation was a foreseeable result, but "planning" has never been Dubya's strong suit. I think he's finding it hard to keep shifting everyone's attention to the "evil doers" while the Bonne Soeur of the American south is literally drowning.

Now the troops are arriving in New Orleans in meaningful numbers and may be able to bring order and comfort to a city so sorrowfully lacking in it, so classicly left to fend for itself.

Katrina has taught us a good lesson. She has demonstrated the all too real results of black and white politics that allow for no grey areas, no evaluation, no smarts. Katrina has shown us what happens when governments prioritize ideology over ideals, politics over practicality, hubris over humanity.

As Bowie so eloquently put it, "Where's your shame? You've left us up to our necks in it."