the blame
i sincerely hope, over the coming days and weeks, that people maintain the anger currently felt about the handling of hurricane katrina. and i also hope that we remain smart about it. there are a lot of people in power right now who deserve a merciless roasting, and with geraldo rivera falling apart on live television and newt gingrich saying things i agree with (however hypocritically), i'm inclined to think they might just get what's coming to them.
at the same time, visions of lynndie england dance in my head. i remember the public outrage that followed the torture at abu graib. i also remember how quickly it was quelled by a poor, rural red herring. england, with her tonya-harding-esque ickiness, sucked up all our meaningful hate. instead of a discussion about prisoners' rights or the patriot act or our role in iraq, she became the fall guy and america took the bait.
michael chertoff, michael brown and george w. bush each inspire an intense and wicked hatred within me as i type this. but what has happened over the past few days extends far beyond each of them. we need radical changes in our attitudes toward race, class and private property. we need new legislation on a federal level to ensure our future safety. we need a complete re-evaluation of civic duty in this country-- on a personal, political, and corporate level. and we need to let the ignorant shits who allowed this atrocious, racist embarrassment to occur have everything that's coming to them. i just hope we don't exhaust ourselves by attacking individuals, when institutions are more deserving of our sharpest and smartest assault.
(***p.s. please pardon my soapboxing. if my journal appears occasionally "impersonal", i assure you that any coolness on my part is an illusion. for all their ten-cent-words and pretentious ideas, my entries are borne out of the same psychological neediness that inspires endless quizilla diagnoses all across the blogosphere. put simply, I AM FREAKING OUT about this, and i needed to blow off steam***)