Blame The Victim
Pop quiz - The bungled relief efforts in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast are to be blamed on:
A) the federal government, which has fleets of ships, helicopters, trucks, and thousands of troops and care givers at its disposal, with billions of dollars available to buy every conceivable item needed for the hurricane victims
B) armed Negro thugs roving through the streets, driving back all emergency responders
Anyone with any wits would pick A, but the government and its apologists sure would like to talk about B. Let's be clear, shooting at paramedics and firemen is bad, but is that why 20,000 people were crammed into the Superdome with no aid or transportation? Did the armed Negro thugs prevent the government from mustering relief supplies days before Hurricane Katrina? I was watching the news, and I'm pretty sure every media outlet mentioned Katrina - oh, I'd say about a few hundred thousand times - before it even hit the Gulf Coast.
This was not an unforeseen emergency. I have been hearing for years how New Orleans was the most endangered city in the country because of its geography. Why weren't levees maintained, why weren't supplies stockpiled, and why the fuck didn't the poor and the infirm get evacuated from the city with Army trucks and helicopters? This IS the federal government's fault. New Orleans is a desperately poor city (which is also partially the feds' fault but anyway). Louisiana is a poor state. This is where the federal government and the combined resources of the "most powerful nation in the world" get applied to those in need.
"Zero tolerance for looters" is what our Chimpanzee-In-Chief has been saying. Does that include desperate people looting pharmacies for water and medicine? We ignore a whole underclass of American society, and in typical fashion, we want to jail them or kill them if they don't like it and get uppity.
Americans like to boast about our power and supremacy, but we've been responding to this disaster like we're a Third World country. Can the poverty and race of the victims have anything to do with that? Surely not! Surely Beverly Hills, Orange County, and Hilton Head would've suffered just as badly if they were cut off from the rest of the nation. Yeah, and a couple of black kids with handguns caused this mess.
A) the federal government, which has fleets of ships, helicopters, trucks, and thousands of troops and care givers at its disposal, with billions of dollars available to buy every conceivable item needed for the hurricane victims
B) armed Negro thugs roving through the streets, driving back all emergency responders
Anyone with any wits would pick A, but the government and its apologists sure would like to talk about B. Let's be clear, shooting at paramedics and firemen is bad, but is that why 20,000 people were crammed into the Superdome with no aid or transportation? Did the armed Negro thugs prevent the government from mustering relief supplies days before Hurricane Katrina? I was watching the news, and I'm pretty sure every media outlet mentioned Katrina - oh, I'd say about a few hundred thousand times - before it even hit the Gulf Coast.
This was not an unforeseen emergency. I have been hearing for years how New Orleans was the most endangered city in the country because of its geography. Why weren't levees maintained, why weren't supplies stockpiled, and why the fuck didn't the poor and the infirm get evacuated from the city with Army trucks and helicopters? This IS the federal government's fault. New Orleans is a desperately poor city (which is also partially the feds' fault but anyway). Louisiana is a poor state. This is where the federal government and the combined resources of the "most powerful nation in the world" get applied to those in need.
"Zero tolerance for looters" is what our Chimpanzee-In-Chief has been saying. Does that include desperate people looting pharmacies for water and medicine? We ignore a whole underclass of American society, and in typical fashion, we want to jail them or kill them if they don't like it and get uppity.
Americans like to boast about our power and supremacy, but we've been responding to this disaster like we're a Third World country. Can the poverty and race of the victims have anything to do with that? Surely not! Surely Beverly Hills, Orange County, and Hilton Head would've suffered just as badly if they were cut off from the rest of the nation. Yeah, and a couple of black kids with handguns caused this mess.
posted by David Bowden at 10:08 AM
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