Yet another unbalanced perspective on New Orleans...

http://tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1026

At the direction of my wife who has a co-worker who had the nerve to bring such a politically derisive article and post it in a place of business, I wandered over to the website where the article was generated. As soon as I saw the word “objectivist” I knew what I was in for. Its yet another article about the failures of the disaster in New Orleans, but this time the failure is placed firmly on the shoulders of the welfare state. Now I have read all kinds of Libertarian and Anarcho-Capitalist articles, especially lately, but this one is so utterly one sided in its description of the poor as “Welfare Parasites” that it goes beyond the pale in demonizing the poor for their condition.

Showing no supportive data, no analysis of the failures of the capitalist state in its complicity with the “Welfare State” to offer people nothing short of a pittance for their labor, and no background on the governmental failures of diversion of funds from a potential (and many critics believe, inevitable) disaster to a wasteful and unnecessary war. No mention of the secondary disasters of people already strapped for cash being squeezed further into bankruptcy by inflated gas prices, which were as much a result of inadequate refining capabilities as capitalist speculators. (Exxon-Mobil is set to post the largest profits in history this fiscal year from a combination of high oil prices and limited supply of Gasoline) There is a striking parallel here. Neither the government nor private industry, in this case the oil companies, saw the writing on the wall, and if they did there is no excuse for not reacting to it accordingly. No excuse, save that of blissful and purposeful ignorance, and a need, a need to collude.

I have always held that there are no such things as conspiracies; there are what I call “convenient collusions” disparate parties working in loose conjunction with each other under the guise of an agenda or a common purpose. Conspiracies are painfully awkward and unwieldy animals; they have a mind of their own. They never do what you want them to do, and there are multiple agendas at stake when any group of people engage in them. Every individual has his or her own agenda and even if some of the parties agree on some of the items, there will always be self interest that gets in the way or risks the exposure of the entire enterprise. Collisions need not have a common agenda, at least not one that requires direct and total coordination or actions. The added benefit, like the sleeper cell model of terror, is that collusion participants can disavow knowledge of the actions of each other, even if, in this case there is an obvious link between government and private industry.

Neither, in this case, decided that infrastructure was as important as profits, or expediency. In the case of the government, there was no thought given to the haphazard way the levee system was constructed, and no thought that even as projected forecasts of disaster loomed the money and time spent wasted elsewhere (Iraq, for example) while cutting taxes so dramatically that the war sapped all available financial resources. And what could have been prevented by doing the right thing by the citizens of New Orleans is now a costly exercise in recovery and a dangerous example of what neglect and lack of forethought can do to already desperate people.

On the part of the oil companies and their ability to process and refine, the same logic applies. Could anyone not have seen the coming crisis? Did the fact that more Americans opted for bigger, better, faster, means of transportation not clue in the producers that the need for refining capacity would soon outstrip the ability to process fuel? I know they have some very intelligent and forward thinking individuals working for the likes of Exxon-Mobil. How could they not have seen this coming? Or was it cheaper and more profitable to limit supply? Cheaper and more profitable to NOT build more refineries or increase the capacity and efficiency of current ones, cheaper and more profitable to not anticipate the obvious growth of industry overseas. Cheaper and more profitable not to diversify and explore other options.

The posit that the poor are solely in control of their own destiny is an old one, and it is a deeply flawed and disproved one. The fact that many or most of the poor and welfare ridden are African-American (for lack of a better all-encompassing description) makes an article like this borderline racist. Yep, from the back of the deck I reveal… the Race card! People still can’t get it through their heads that the poverty stricken, both black and white, are desperate, not animals. The severe lack of education that shows in every poor soul who speaks on television (again, both black and white) is a major factor in determining the course of poverty. And the course of poverty in this country is determined as much by where you live as by what social strata you come from.

Much has already been said about the media descriptors used to make delineations between “looting” food and “finding’ it but still, given the perception of the reality that for many people IS poverty only those of us who have been cast in a bad light can see what the descriptors really mean. Like the testing done to determine preference of one race over another, it shows the root of how we perceive people is still ground in the subconscious, and that subconscious remains firmly planted in the soil of race.

The great failure of our society is not the welfare state; it is the utter lack of an intellectual understanding and a rational means by which we attain an understanding of what is actually happening around us. Tiadaily.com claims to come from a place of intellectuality and rationality but this article is an indication not only of emotionalism wrapped in the cloak of common sense and clothed in the ninja costume of rationality, there are no attributions to provide the numbers of people actually on welfare, no numbers to maintain the argument that there are other options for theses people who live in one of the poorest states and one of the cities with the highest unemployment rates in the nation to “do better” than the yoke of public assistance, no criticism of the corporate and institutional complacency and further manipulation of the climate that allows such poverty. An intellectual and rational viewpoint would include these things; they are not a part of this tome. They have no place in the world in which this type of blame and one-dimensional thinking reside.

I cant get beyond the lack of attribution, the lack of compassion of some of the “heroic individualists.” I also cant seem to get beyond the fact that their intellectual godmother. Ayn Rand was by all accounts a manipulative emotional cripple, who going against many of the precepts of her own philosophy, manipulated and coerced others to her own advantage. Mostly I cannot get beyond the utter lack of compassion inherent in this manner of thinking. They believe that altruism, in any form is counterproductive, that the needs of the one not only trump the needs of the many, but are actually good for the society (which by its very nature is collectivist to some degree). I feel, yes FEEL, that being a cold hearted bastard and thinking only of your own needs only gets you to the very lonely and unfulfilling top. Intellectually and rationally I KNOW that this is a most destructive road as it leads only to the nullification of the individual by the ignorance of others. To define oneself in the singular, as an example, and somehow manage to contribute to the society (the collective) is irrational and highly anti-intellectual. Yes there is some measure of self interest in every relationship we undertake, Ill grant that, but without a touch of altruism, there is no other. There is only the singular, resting at the top of a very lonely mountain, watching the ants scurry beneath him. Ants he has manipulated to do his singular bidding, ants who en masse will eventually rebel and topple the mountain. So much for forethought.