Bush, West and mental disorders...

“Bush doesn’t care about Black people”

Yeah it’s a gross generalization, an emotional response, but considering the foot dragging and lip service given to the infrastructure of New Orleans and the barriers surrounding the city and the response to the disaster that was a result of them, it is a gut reaction yet some shred of truth exists.

Bush is the embodiment of an ethos, one which on the one hand encourages us to work hard and we will be rewarded and on the other hand removes the protections that even the playing field. The changes in bankruptcy law, the reduction of essential services, the removal of incentives to get the poor out of poverty, all the results of this same ethos. Now I’m not going to go into the many flaws I find with modern conservatism, but I will say this to president Bush and his ilk, you are no Conservatives.

Natural disasters are notoriously opportunistic, not by design, but as we continue to ignore the existing problems with our infrastructure the issues of poverty and neglect and continue to feed the market, the results of our lack of focus come in the form of devastation in what are ironically named “Acts of God.”  

Does Bush or the current administration care about Black people? The obvious answer is yes, although the emotional response from us is “hell no.” Unfortunately the actual answer lies somewhere in-between. The disaster that took place, like most, was minimizable or entirely avoidable. The levees that held back the water surrounding the city of New Orleans were, as we are want to do in this country, a quick, temporary fix. Looking at a country like Holland, and the intricately designed series of waterway levees and dykes, its hard to justify in the richest country in the world, how it is even conceivable that we would consider such a low tech solution.

Had we opted for a higher tech solution, or simply spent a considerable amount of time and money to research the possibility of creating something that would manage water flow more efficiently, the people of New Orleans may not be displaced and their lives uprooted and devastated.  But the ethos of conservatism is privatization and that generally translates to what is more fiscally and socially safe and more often than not, temporary.

There are so many factors that come into play when looking at the results of a disaster. In this particular case the elements are legion. The possibility of climate change aside, the abject poverty of the people living in the gulf region and the Mississippi delta, and the halfhearted attempts at keeping the below sea level city literally above water. All these and many other aspects of the branching chain of our economic and social “morality” are out of whack and I believe to some degree have contributed to the horror and devastation we are seeing today.

We, in central Florida, have just passed the year mark of the second of three hurracaines that in some way, directly or indirectly impacted us. I remember the following day the National Guard was out in full force, keeping order and maintaining the curfews that the local governments had imposed. The aid came quickly and efficiently. Granted we were not underwater, and granted there is already a strong military presence here, I give the feds that much. But I think the general consensus was and still is that help to the victims of the disaster that befell the Gulf States, New Orleans in particular, was inadequate and slow to come.

An unreported and arguably more incisive indictment of the governments lack of action before during and after Katrina was delivered by Rep. Dennis Kucinich The full text of which can be found here: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=19698) Its no surprise which outburst made the national news. Kanye West’s comments were broadcast as part of a relief effort and excised for broadcast on the west coast, it was live on the east coast and was promptly and efficiently dismissed by the “management of NBC.” I wonder why, all of the sudden, in the last few years people have been regularly going “off script” on live television. Kinda makes the Janet Jackson incident seem like a trend setting one, doesn’t it?

These incidents almost seem like the restless results of a country asleep at the wheel. It just occurred to me that the spontaneous outbursts of random lunacy come when the forces of repression are at their highest and most powerful. Comparing the two incidents may seem like a stretch, whatever Jackson’s motives were they probably weren’t political, or were they?

The fact is that the current climate here in the United States is as repressive and blame ridden as ever. Look at the defining moments of the last 5 years and you will see a laundry list of issues ranging from the mundane to the ridiculous, Gay Marriage, Media Violence and Sex, Taxes, Evolutional studies in school, and a senseless and wasteful war that kept morphing form reason to reason, none of which have yet to come to fruition.  And at the center of it all we have the supposed moral superiority of an ethos, modern conservatism.

Now I’m not by any means rationalizing or minimizing the impact of these things on society, but I see them as more of a symptom or a reflection of the changes in it, than the causal connection the conservatives see. Howard Stern, although now only occasionally amusing, likened the vehemence with which the FCC went after him as “dangerous to free speech,” with which I agree. Dislike for Stern not withstanding you have to see the man’s point. When a ideologue and racist like Bob Grant is allowed to call blacks “monkeys” wishing the deaths of many a non-white adversary and hoping for gays the be “mowed down” by police at a gay pride parade, and various other violence inciting diatribes. And is constantly skipped over in the FCC’s righteous indignation of lewd and hateful talk. Michael Savage, another constant offender has been overlooked by the FCC as well, although he was fired by MSNBC after his comments, “You should only get AIDS and die, you pig, how's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better to do than to put me down, you piece of garbage, you got nothing better to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it. Get trichinosis. Now do we have another nice caller here who's busy because he didn't have a nice night in the bathhouse who's angry at me today? Put another, put another sodomite on....no more calls? I don't care about these bums, they mean nothing to me.” No fines were incurred although the remarks were heard far and wide.

Using these examples, a little oral sex and potty humor seems downright wholesome. The Stern uproar was far less well… uproarious form the people who usually go after radio hosts and various other talking heads yet the fines imposed do not reflect the public outcry.

So then it’s ok to call blacks “monkeys” and wish death on homosexuals, but for some reason its wrong to discuss (however juvenile it is at times) sex. I could easily extrapolate that by whom is being attacked, those with a queasy constitution for sex talk, or people of color and gays, that the administration and those behind it “don’t care.”

There are many other less obvious examples of where the priorities of Conservatism, especially the strange hybrid of Religious and Capitalistic concerns, collude to give the impression that anyone outside its influential sphere is not only wrong, but suffers a severe “mental disorder” as Savage puts it in his new book. The real mental disorder is counting the millions of working poor and their uninsured children as collateral damage in the new economy.

This is where West got his notion. And in a way, I believe he’s right.