Even though I grew up in New York, I never felt myself to be an “American.” If anything, I would probably define myself as a New Yorker. So I always had an “outsider” perspective on U.S. culture. Having lived abroad for so many years, and in particular living in Israel, I feel even more so now.
Since coming back three years ago, what most struck me is how superficial U.S. culture has become. All public human interactions and all political discourse is literally on the surface. The human core is always covered by some mask.
This is particularly jarring when it comes to news coverage of disasters. The perfectly coiffed and superficially attractive news anchor woman, never loses her fixed smile and her “professional” demeanor as she describes the horror unfolding before our eyes.
When 9/11 happened, for a few moments that surface was breached, but it was quickly covered up again. No one dared probe beneath the surface of that event or the subsequent reactions of our government. To do so would be “unpatriotic” – or even worse, “unprofessional.”
It is true that the fear 9/11 engendered, was quickly used by Bush & Co as a propaganda tool to crush all opposition to their disastrous policies. So the smiles on the “journalists” faces were even more fixed. While fear temporarily causes humans to act instinctively, in the long run our higher mental functions need to kick in. So I would like to hope that slowly, beneath the surface, over the past few years, as our foreign policy lies in shambles, and the economy slides towards third world gaps between the haves and have-nots, and this country looks more and more like a banana republic, rusty wheels are beginning to turn inside the minds of the people of the United States. By now, one would like to believe that all the lies and propaganda are beginning to seem hollow as one disaster follows upon another.
I remember about five years ago, when I was on a long drive to a business meeting somewhere, probably in California, I heard this half hour special report on NPR about the inevitable disaster that will strike in New Orleans. The clinical description of how the city would become a lake, and the epic proportions of the accompanying devastation of life and property were chilling. Hence no one can claim that the destruction of New Orleans is a surprise. No one can give the excuse, as was done after 9/11 by BushCheneyRumsfeldCondi: “No one imagined something like this could happen on U.S. soil.”
Yet still, I was shocked this morning, when I heard the perfectly coiffed and superficially attractive and oh-so-professional anchorwoman on CNN literally become unhinged. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I heard a TV person on a major news outlet speak like a human being. She was moved almost to tears and justifiably angry as she watched desparate people pleaing for help. So instead of reading her script, she asked a simple question: how could our government have been so unprepared? How can it be that in the richest, most powerful country in the world, people are scrounging for food and water, and desparately trying to escape a disaster, with no clear prospects of being saved?
Here are a few more questions:
Why is it when the mayor of New Orleans rightly called for an evacuation before the storm, the much-touted “Homeland Security” agency had no plan in place to evacuate the city’s poor, who don’t have the means to leave, meaning that about 100,000 people were left behind to their fate?
Why is it, that despite the clear danger to the city, over the past few years the Bush administration diverted millions of dollars in government funds from levee repairs?
Why is it, that despite warnings from government agencies (not to speak of outside research groups) of the disastrous effects of development in the region, the Bush adminstration rolled back restrictions on development of the wetlands?
Why is it that many days after it was clear that Katrina would hit, FEMA and the state goverments still don’t have adequate manpower in the field to deal with the disaster, which probably means even more loss of life, not to speak of even greater economic damages?
This article and this one begin to provide some answers.
The only remaining question is this: will the people of the United States finally wake up and hold Bush & Co accountable for the all disasters they have brought upon us?