2005-09-05

Editorial

The Age of Entitlement and Indifference

The country mourns the death and destruction wrought by the powerful Katrina.   Would that tears could solve problems, but not so.

Pestilence, plague, floods and other natural disasters have intermittently tormented humans throughout their history.   Man has fought back, occasionally losing but more often winning in recent times as engineering backed by science and technology has proved to be effective in developing the means to resist nature’s onslaughts.

But that was during the Age of Enlightenment.   Now, however, we are in the Age of Entitlement and Indifference where them that has, gets, and them that hasn’t, gets trickled down to. Unless there’s a powerful Katrina, of course. Then, them that has, gets out safely, and them that hasn’t, gets isolated and virtually wiped out.    

It seemingly has taken forever for a substantial number of people to get the message that the Bush administration is horribly incompetent.   As terrible as it is, we owe Katrina something for showing us Bush incompetence in something other than a war context.   Perhaps some doubters, faced with what happened during rescue operations in the South, will now believe what many patriots have been saying for a long time about the bungled mess that is now Iraq.  

Partisanship and cronyism accompanied by a huge dose of chutzpah, insensitivity, stupidity and, yes, cowardice has been the hallmark of this administration.   The president has clearly demonstrated his dark side by failing to meet with Cindy Sheehan and, at the very least, expressing sympathy for the loss of her son.   Bush is, after all, the supposed leader of all of the people.   However, this president’s leadership qualities are nil outside of staged events where he has written scripts to follow.   He has failed as Commander in Chief with his off the cuff “Bring ‘ Em On!” comment, inviting the enemy to attack and kill our troops ... our children.  His failure to push for adequate funds for the VA for care of troops physically wounded and/or mentally scarred, perhaps permanently, by the horrors they have witnessed in Iraq and Vietnam is unforgivable.  His response to Katrina, flying over the wasteland in a helicopter four days after the event and not landing to talk to the people, is equally unforgivable as well as cowardly.   I expect that a Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman or Jack Kennedy would have been there, on the ground, providing leadership and sharing the victims’ grief.  

Instead of a “rescue” organization geared to effective action and run by competent, experienced professionals, we have witnessed a complex rescue situation directed by inexperienced party hacks appointed by a doctrinaire President who values rewarding personal friends over competence.   When things get really tough, its evident that we have a leader who can exude a swaggering macho image in his flight suit on the deck of a US Navy ship, lead a group of sycophantic media people on a bicycle ride on his ranch or pose as the rugged outdoorsman with his little chain saw for a photo op, but who apparently becomes physically and mentally immobile when courage is needed.   One has only to recall Bush’s response to the 9-11 attacks, when he sat frozen in time in a kindergarten classroom, to get insight into his lack of response to Katrina.  

Experts have been predicting for sometime that natural disasters will increase in frequency and severity in the future.   The Bush administration with its faith-based creationism base has failed to heed the warnings of scientists and engineers whose entire careers have been devoted to the study of and solution to problems that can be brought on by acts of nature and, now, terrorism.   The rulers in this Age of Entitlement and Indifference do not allow for such consideration. They are unabashedly anti-science, anti-environment.  The Carlyle Group, for example, isn’t concerned with the well-being of residents of the Mississippi Delta or the dwellers of the swamp areas of Louisiana.    But don’t rule out Halliburton being called in (sole source contract, of course) to clean up the mess.

It is abundantly clear now that many, if not most, of the so-called protections we have against national disasters won’t work.   Many of our nuclear plants are near large residential areas.   Many are accessible by only one main highway.   The elaborate plans for evacuating such areas now can be seen as likely failures.   The potential siting of liquid natural gas installations in or near heavily populated areas, e.g. New Bedford, MA, has been in the news lately with opponents of such locations being cast as “spoil sports,” who are anti-business, anti-progress or anti-Bush.   Now that Katrina has spoken, it remains to be seen if a lesson has been learned by those who will dump hazardous industry in the back yards of those who can’t do much about it.  

Clearly it is up to those who can do something about it to now rise up and protest all that has gone on... in Iraq, in the Southland, and in our schools where some of our children are being taught to question science and base their futures on something immeasurable called “intelligent design.”   “Intelligent design” has little to offer in the way of defenses against disasters such as that wrought by Katrina or by terrorists.   Intelligent thinking, based on science and technology . . . human knowledge . . . on the other hand, can help us understand and prevent these assaults on our communities.

Speak out folks, loudly and strongly. Write, phone, chat, whatever you’re best at, but do something.   Do it singly or in groups. Morning, afternoons and evenings. Raise the roof; beat the drums.   Small change or large denomination bills.   If we don’t, we’re gonna lose it.   Better believe it.   And as I write this, Justice Renquist has just died.  All the more reason to act.