A time for finger-pointing

It's just not right for the people who have been systematically screwed by this country, from slavery to Jim Crow to the present, who, far from deserving to be drowned, in fact in a just world would would deserve compensation for the wrongs this country has done them, have been the ones we have chosen to abandon, left to drown by the government of the United States, and their bodies left to rot in the sun or float off in the water.

And for this bald-headed sunken-eyed ghoul in charge of the fatherland-security agency, Michael Chertoff, to claim that his agency, legally given the task of preparing for such a disaster, and legally given charge of dealing with its effects--for him to claim that he and his incompetent and/or criminally indifferent bureaucrats should not be held to account for the mind-boggling debacle this situation has become, and for him to insist it should be the responsibility of the states and cities to do something (a bare-faced lie, as a quick glance at the legal charge given his agency will show), and that, moreover, a hurricane followed by high water was thought by his agency to be beyond the realm of possibility, are all statements I would have thought to be themselves beyond the realm of the possible, just as they are beyond the realm of rationality, decency, honor, and truth.

The realm inhabited by these sacrificial dwarves, thrust forward by their lord and master George Bush to take a bullet for him, is indeed a realm beyond rationality, decency, honor, and truth, and that realm is the place where the current rulers of this country live.

These dwarves certainly do need to be fired, for starters. That is not too much to be hoped for. And Bush himself needs to be impeached, if criminal neglect of this magnitude should fit under the rubric of high crimes and misdemeanors, as surely in a just world it would-- but that perhaps that is too much to hope for, for now.

But it is not too much to hope that this, well, "divisive" issue be made an ever more divisive and central issue. It should be such an issue. Fingers should be pointed. Voices should be raised.

I hope there are enough decent people in this country to do something about it