How long, to sing this song.

There are times, like now, where I become so sad and outraged, where I feel so helpless, I lose the ability to make any kind of rational sense of things. Sometimes, even to speak. Hence all the quiet around here lately.

G--familiar with my current mental state--calls me at work a few times a day to check in. Thankfully (in my opinion) he's too busy at his work to dedicate himself to full-time monitoring of the unfolding horror in the South, like I do/have/am. "How's it goin', babe?" he asks; first a request for the latest news, second to soothe what he knows will be my reaction to it. Sometimes I can get out a relatively complex sentence like, "It's...it's...it's so bad." The rest of the time all I can muster is a light moan/exhale he knows translates to ‘don’t ask’.

I didn't think it possible, but my hatred for George Bush has reached a new high. Inappropriate, misdirected anger one might say, but it makes sense in my non-verbal lizard brain state. Now obviously the man is not responsible for a hurricane. (Well, not that we can prove.) But he is responsible for so many enormous policy fuck-ups, so many unheeded warnings, so much mind-numbingly bad governing in general, that this, his latest episode of business as usual in the face of disaster--his being at a golf resort to try and talk little old ladies out of their Medicaid while the storm was beating the coastline, and at a "Yea! War!" rally while people in New Orleans were clinging to the last three inches of air in their attics, having it be BIG NEWS instead of a given that he’d have to cut his vacation short and head back to Washington--well, that pushed me over an edge I didn't know was there.

I guess people in the hurricane path were supposed to rest easy knowing FEMA was at the ready. Oh, oops… It’s been dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security. Right. Well the National Guard was on hand, full force, ready to manage the disaster. What's that? They're all where? Iraq? Oh. Right. But thank goodness they completed all those levee repairs in 2002. Huh? Oh they cut the project in 2002. Gee, I guess they’ll have to rely on the other existing disaster preparedness agencies. NO shit, them too?…

...and my hatred grows and grows.

This guy in the next office over, a relative stranger, said the most absurd, evil thing to me today. He was moaning in the lobby about the stifling humidity we've been suffering here in New York. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and agreed it has been unbearable, then mentioned the hurricane and how, you know, in perspective, we have little if nothing to complain about.

"Why, you got family in New Orleans?" he asked.

"No.” I answered.

“Ever been there?”

“No, I never have.”

"Then why do you care?" he said.

Wow. Just…wow. There you have it, my brain said, this is how a George Bush thinks. How the empathy-free, sympathy-free, compassionless assholes who don't give a rat’s ass about anything but their own narrow lives and agendas, think. This is who votes for a George Bush. This is how illegal wars gain support. This is how genocide and rape rooms and famine and preventable disease can exist, and are ignored. Why do I care? With a straight face, totally bewildered by my sadness he asked, Why do I care?

And we wonder why the evacuees have gone mad, shooting at helicopters, looting, rioting. It seems to me you wouldn’t have to sit on a roof watching bodies float by for too long before you’d realize all of the inaction, budget cuts, and lack of preparedness meant frankly? protecting that area from disaster was never really that big of a priority. Given the choice of how and when and where to spend money, other stuff was just a wee more important. Your life doesn’t matter. That’s a frightening realization to have to face in the aftermath of Armageddon: Nobody cared before, and they can’t help you now. You are totally on your own.

Goddamn right I’d pick up a gun.

Posted by Antigeist at September 1, 2005 03:09 PM