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Well, yes, there is a kind of shocking distillation of meaning in the catastrophe
that hit the city of New Orleans. It's as if the belly of the beast that is
the US imperial leviathan has been turned over—its underbelly exposed.
There, you can see the reality: two nations, one rich, one poor; one
televised, the other invisible—until now.
Abject poverty, criminal infrastructural neglect, opportunistic defunding of
minimal preventive planning, disaster relief resources otherwise engaged abroad
in protecting the interests of oligarchs, industrial poisons erupting at a mere
shrug of nature from their thin disguise just beneath the urban surface of triumphant
financial capitalism—a river of murderous toxins running free, running
free in the streets of the city of sweetness, the city of food, the city of
jazz like a Frankenstein's monster shaking loose his chains and going after
its creator:
"Free markets, free markets, free markets," he's calling,
laughing madly, "here I am, your creature, your bastard, your long-suppressed
experiment in planned anarchy for profit, your pig-ethics child. Your beloved;
your nightmare."
Gasoline prices rising.
New Orleans—welcome to Baghdad!
As it shall be abroad, so it will be at home. Poor people ain't got
no home, no electricity, no water. No hospitals, no schools, no city. New Orleans,
welcome to Fallujah, to Gaza, to Haiti, to El Salvador, to Nicaragua.
Bechtel, Kellogg Root & Brown, Carlyle, Halliburton welcome you
to "globalization": the pain is yours; the gain is theirs.
Welcome to a civilization that ridicules science as an entity beneath treason.
Welcome to the freedom and democracy of a state that knows no social contract,
where you are born with a gun in your hand but no concept of the common good;
a state that owes you nothing but owns you body and soul—in the unemployment
lines, in the soup kitchens, in the army recruitment centers, in the prisons,
on death row, in the schools that teach you nothing, in front of your television
screens that lie and string you along with cynical contempt. To your doom, to
your doom, for what is freedom without resources?
The courts have evicted you: there is no bankruptcy for you, no socialism
for you. Debtor prison is good enough for you. Government handouts, in the form
of corporate socialism, are strictly bookmarked for corporations. No one cares
about you. Yours is not to reason why; yours is but to pray and die.
Welcome to the Plan for the New American Century. Welcome to the New
World Order. Welcome. It stands exposed. Right there in New Orleans.
America, welcome to your planned future as a domestic, internal third world.
Welcome to personal and public chronic indebtedness. Welcome to a bloated "defense"
budget that cannot assist you, let alone "defend" you from a hurricane
in the age of science. Welcome to the offensive budget that makes your country
dependent on China for daily loans. Welcome to the multicolored ribbons in support
of a war that kills your troops—your children, who are not here, not at
home to help with their strength, their youth, their bravery, their idealism
in pulling you out of the toxic flood waters.
Welcome. Dr. Frankenstein's monster's vengeance is at our door.
