NOTE: I have been, and will be, criticized for "politicizing" the naton's worst-ever natural disaster. But knowing how something happened, what made it worse, how it can be made better and how it might be prevented is the only way I know to make sense of things which are otherwise beyond comprehension. My prayers to all.
Everyone knows 9/11 was a turning point. (Picture from Tales from the Teapot.)
It changed attitudes irrevocably, in ways we're still trying to deal with four years on.
Hurricane Katrina is another turning point, a different turning point, and a much, much bigger event.
The terrorists destroyed two buildings, and the center of a city. Katrina destroyed multiple cities -- Slidell, Gulfport, Biloxi, New Orleans.
We knew after 9/11 it could happen again. Know this after Katrina. It WILL happen again, and again, and again.
The civilizing process of the 20th century, with its oil-driven economy, is now driving the global environment off a cliff. Most of the world knew this before Katrina. Now even Mississippi knows this.
And this will change us.
- We can no longer pretend to independence. We are interdependent.
- We can no longer pretend that the environmental damage of the oil economy can be borne. It cannot.
- We can no longer remain dependent on the oil economy. It is failing, and will fail.
One of the most maddening aspects of the Katrina coverage, for me, has been MSNBC's continued emphasis on the Casinos as the engines of the Gulf Coast economy. We drive through that area every vacation, and I have taken to calling Mississippi "Pottersville," the town Bedford Falls became in the nighbmare sequence of "It's a Wonderful Life." And Louisiana has made itself into West Pottersville.
I'm not talking about sin here. I'm talking about depending on something that's artificial, fake, phony, as the basis of an economy. Pretending that you'll get rich off others' sin, that the residue won't touch you, and you can then say "screw you" to the needs of the poor, to education, to your fellow man, to the real world, that always fails in time.
It is time for an attitude adjustment.
Stop pretending Ronald Reagan was a Great Man. Jimmy Carter was. He was a prophet, who tried to warn us. But we chose Reaganism. We chose a policy The Onion described as "kill them all." (Image from Flickr user Melinda.)
And what do we have? We have SUVs, global warming, Iraq, and rampant hypocrisy. We have the same people who cut hurricane relief out of next year's budget strutting around, posing for photo ops, while cities lay in waste and help is said to be weeks away.
What must we do? Getting off our high horse is just a start.
But I have a little list going, to which your additions may be welcome:
- Get right with international law again.
- Get right with our treaty obligations again.
- Get busy replacing oil with renewables, now.
- Get humble, not Humble.
- Remember that this is one world again, that we are all God's children, wherever we live and however much we make or don't make. You are no better in the eyes of God than some campesino climbing under a fence on the Mexico border. Stop pretending that you are.
No matter how big the political earthquake you think may be coming, it's nothing compared to the inner changes, economic changes, and social changes that must begin now.
We can hang together or we shall surely hang separately. Benjamin Franklin was referring to 13 states. Now it means the World.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. V Harlan on August 30, 2005 11:39 PM writes...
You want to take this moment to stand on a soap box? I found this site while trying to find out news about Slidell, LA. I have family members who are missing out of Slidell, Bay Saint Louis and Waveland. I do not appreciate the political satire, and do not think that others who are hurting and trying to find loved ones would either. Speak as you will, it is your right, but now is NOT the time!!!!!!!!!!!!
Permalink to Comment2. VHarlan is an Idiot on August 31, 2005 01:43 AM writes...
V Harlan you are nothing more than a whining crybaby. After reading your ridiculous response to this blog, I realize that there is either serious "anti-intellectualism" going on, or you are just plain stupid. I would prefer the latter, though the former would hold more true if there are yet more idiots who think like you.
Permalink to Comment3. Jason on August 31, 2005 01:48 AM writes...
Slidell lies in ruins, and half my immediate family has lost everything, and you look at it as an opportunity to tell us Jimmy Carter was a "prophet." What a sad, sad little man you are.
Permalink to Comment4. Frog on August 31, 2005 08:52 AM writes...
The rabid conservatives are always righteously indignant when you don't bow down to Reagan or any other pet conservative. Meanwhile, I'd be surprised if New Orleans wasn't renamed "Reagan Bay." They're almost certainly planning to deface our money with his image, too.
Permalink to Comment5. george kamburoff on August 31, 2005 01:59 PM writes...
Blankenhorn didn't cause the disaster in the gulf, and was correctly pointing out our continuing susceptibility to these, given the corporate-dominated anti-environentalism in our present government.
Does anyone in Slidell now doubt Global Climate Change? What will it take to get them to admit they were wrong and the enviros right?
As in Iraq, we are reaping what we have sown.
Permalink to Comment6. Russell Shaw on August 31, 2005 05:02 PM writes...
Dana, I'm with you. Can't say I am unsympathetic to the plight of America's new Bangladesh, but still..
I am wondering if the voters in Louisiana and Mississippi who helped polluter-allied Reagan win in 1980 would have found themselves fated differently under a second Carter term. If Carter came in, we could have had an alternative fuels program in place by now, and might have had decades of global warming controls in place.
Whose to say if those steps might not have rendered the Gulf even 1/100th of a degree cooler than it is now?
And since hurricanes need warm water to feed, what if that temperature difference- however slight- might have caused Katrina to be slightly weaker? What if that, in turn, would have caused Lake P. to be a little "kinder and gentler"- cresting just short of the levees rather than breaching them?
Sadly, we'll never know.
But don't worry. "Moral values," remember?
Permalink to Comment7. Mike Sierra on August 31, 2005 05:04 PM writes...
Really, I see very little difference between the reasoning exemplified in this post and Pat Robertson's statement, following September 11, that gays and abortionists were responsible for bringing down God's wrath. I will have no part of this appeal to self-loathing.
Permalink to Comment8. Brad Hutchings on September 1, 2005 12:13 AM writes...
Best wishes to people affected by the hurricane. People of goodwill and good chartacter will know when it is appropriate to make their political points. You know, like sometime after when they actually get around to gathering up the dead.
Permalink to Comment9. Radim Kolarsky on September 1, 2005 06:15 AM writes...
Sir, you must be the most naive, unrealistic, unusable, clueless, inept, impractical person in the world! Absolutely incredible. "Get right with international law"? "Get humble"? Go tell that to the guys struggling right now to rescue people from the water in Slidell and areound New Orleans. Then, when this is all over, maybe in a year, perhaps somebody would listen to your philosophical speeches.
Permalink to Comment10. bartb on September 1, 2005 08:55 AM writes...
I'm done. I really enjoy your tech columns. But I find your columns on economics and politics crude and infantile (I guess that's why they call them "rants").
I wish you had a separate feed for your tech stuff, otherwise - I B Gone.
P.S. keep your tinfoil hat handy, sounds like you really need it.
Permalink to Comment11. Russell Shaw on September 1, 2005 03:11 PM writes...
To those readers who consider it "inappropriate" for you to make policy recommendations to lessen the number of future "Katrinas," I liken what you are writing to a physician appearing on tv in the immediate aftermath of a prominent long-time smoker, and telling society they must change and stop smoking.
You didn't say we should be insensitive to the victims. Your remarks struck me as "look at this horrible tragedy. We hurt for those involved. Now what can we do to lessen the odds of this happening again and again?"
Dana, what you wrote was like an intervention. So whether the intervention is delivered by a physician, a counselor, a politician, or a commentatory- those receiving the intervention feel picked on while it is in process, but wind up better off if they understand the intervention's message-
And act on it.
What you wrote was
Permalink to Comment12. Mike Sierra on September 2, 2005 12:50 AM writes...
For sheer superstitious folly, saying that Katrina's damage might have been lessened had Jimmy Carter been reelected is on par with saying the harvest will be bountiful if we sacrifice a virgin to Baal.
Permalink to Comment13. thorgal on September 7, 2005 12:28 PM writes...
"Interesting" post but sorry to say, useless. Remember the tsunami last december ? What caused such a disaster ? The Earth. What caused the hurricane here ? The Earth again. There surely is a human factor in the violence of this hurricane but this is no surprise. It doesn't make things easy to accept but this region is subject to tropical storms. Now, if the city, which was built under sea level, did not have the adequate protections, you know whom to put the blame on. Which makes me think, Bush and friends should resign right now if they had any scrupules (not to talk about Iraq and other sorts of ugly business). But saying that Jimmy Carter is a prophet is a joke.
Things are so mixed up in this post, it tells how frustrated its author is. There are good points though. If you read about Peak Oil, some of these points make sense. But you have to understand that "politics", as practiced by our so-called "leaders", cannot do anything for improving society. The real improvement has to come from the base, i.e. us, people. This is what we're seeing right now with private initiatives from persons that did not wait for the incompetent and in fact deadly government of the US to do something for the victims of the hurricane. Once the mass understands that, then maybe we can afford hope, despite the imminent collapse of the global economy, which will lead to complete chaos if no understanding of the global situation occurs rapidly, which is to say now!
So don't wait for your leaders to do something, stop believing in the illusion of coherence that they try to maintain in order to keep you asleep, look at your direct environment and think hard with your neighbors on how to cope with the biggest (man-made) crisis human-kind will ever face.
If we don't hold on to each other, it's lost. I hope that help will be brought to as many people as possible that are still suffering from the hurricane consequences. And I hope that this disaster is not the "official" start of our final fall into the worst dark age.
And don't involve God or whatever superbeing. We are alone ... but I said "we", so let's not be billions of "I"s but a single "We".
Permalink to Comment14. John Parmater on September 9, 2005 08:54 AM writes...
Dana, It must take great courage to keep writing when much of your audience so clearly misunderstands you and lashes out. There is a part of this article I either don't understand or disagree with: "I’m talking about depending on something that’s artificial, fake, phony, as the basis of an economy." Isn't much of our economy based on artificial or at least unnecessary products and services? I don't gamble or see the lure in it, but how is it more phony than the latest styles or professional sports?
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