Untitled Document
The abysmal negligence that led to the present catastrophe in the Gulf
states has left the world aghast. The country once believed to be the world
leader in terms of science and education, standard of living and general well-being
has turned out to be an incompetent blundering colossus that can’t even
take care of its own population, of their needs and their safety.
There has been all this bluster about security but when nature strikes,
the president goes partying and playing golf – after the levees were already
giving in to the water from Lake Pontchartrain. The reality of the criminal
neglect doesn’t seem to seep through to the consciousness of anyone who
is in a position of leadership.
George W. Bush says ‘No thank you, we don’t need your help’
to a world that’s stunned by the horror of all the innocent victims in
New Orleans and along the Gulf coast and the mostly black and poor people who
are dying in the streets and in the Superdome. The rest of the world
is grieving, countries from all over the world offer to send help and resources
and the president tells the American people to give charity money to the state
of Louisiana. Charity money! Sure, the involvement of the government should
be downplayed unless an invasion of a foreign and independent country is involved
for the huge profit of the big corporations.
The great American dream has turned into the great American nightmare.
Cracks have spread all over the surface of the country, and those cracks have
been widening in a spectacular fashion after George W. Bush was installed in
the White house by the Supreme Court. Cracks in terms of national security,
cracks in terms of living standards, cracks in terms of job security, cracks
in terms of the number of people living below the poverty level, cracks in terms
of health insurance and the possibility of looking forward to an economically
secure old age.
From the powerbrokers there is simply complete contempt for the individuals
who make up the vast majority of the country’s population and this total
neglect and indifference is now going to strike back at the conceit and the
arrogance of the so-called leaders. Those self-proclaimed leaders are
nothing but the CEOs of an enterprise that is foundering massively. America
Inc. is broke morally and economically.
These dictatorial and conceited leaders are blind and totally indifferent
as far as the well-being of the masses is concerned. Everything in
the world stands or falls with the masses who produce the goods, but the leaders
seem to think that they don’t need any legs to stand on. They are cutting
themselves off from below and the great debacle that is in wait for all Americans,
and maybe for the rest of the world as well, is going to strike like a thunderous
Götterdämmerung.
The willingly blindfolded criminals at the top and the obediently hallelujah-singing
mainstream media are in for a rough awakening. There will be no redemption of
the evangelical fundamentalists, no angels are going to carry them up to heaven
while the world lies smoldering in sin and ruin. We are going to be stumbling
around in the ruins together, the righteous evangelical fundamentalists with
the rest of us, with the Muslims, the Jews, the Hindus, the agnostics and whoever
is left in the world, irrespective of the worldly possessions we have managed
to accumulate.
The American illusion that ‘We are the greatest nation in the world,
we are the best, we are the leaders of the civilized world’ will be the
pall on the grave of the deceased country. An empire never lasts and this empire
of ignorant leaders and an ignorant population is due for the great fall. The
leaders have of course carefully cultivated this generalized ignorance, knowing
well that an informed population would have rebelled long ago. A population
which had learned the art of independent thinking would never have put up with
being so abused, could never have been fooled into acceptance of the obscene
lack of justice and respect for human beings.
Why did Americans insist so much on their belief that they were the center
of civilization, that they had all the virtues and everybody else had all the
vices? Because they were told so again and again. They were told, while all
the time they were battling with economic precariousness, how lucky they were
to be living in the greatest democracy on earth. Sure, the great democracy where
the dead bodies are decomposing in the foul stench of the streets of New Orleans.
We had to send the National Guard to Iraq, you see. And the money went to Halliburton.
There are priorities in the life of America, Inc.
And just as it is almost impossible to believe that your father is a thief,
for the same reason did the American population refuse to see the truth about
their leaders of empty minds and unfeeling hearts. Blind megalomania is now
going to be the end of the nation that is crumbling from within.
In all this talk about values from this bogus administration, the population
totally lost sight of the fact that their values had long been lost, that individual
accumulation of goods had replaced the true values of the heart, the hallelujah
chorus had replaced the people of true feelings for any other beings than their
own selves.
And the walls came tumbling down.