Been away for a few days at my mum's, but unfortunately for my head, being put through sky News on a very regular basis.
Nothing articulate really comes out. There are a few things that have occurred but don't expect them to come out coherently.
From what I know of my reading (see previous moolies) the Bush-and-cronies administration not only do not care (and I say that with absolute conviction) about the poor of America, they have in the past done their best to rip them off to prise as much money out of them and in to the hands of the Republican corporate benefactors as possible. The initial inability to analyse and realise what was going on does not surprise me, since because it was happening to poor blacks, it just didn't occur to them.
Gun control. Gun control. GUN CONTROL. Will it be mentioned in the aftermath?
Global warming. I mean.. c'mon.
I cannot imagine what it must be like living in the States at this point in time. No one could have scenario planned a more appalling mess, and horror than this.
Jesse Jackson being interviewed on BBC news spoke so much sense about the media bias. these people are not refugees. To label an American citizen who has lost everything in their lives, almost down to their very identities, gives others a comfort level of "this is not us". Bullshit, it's everyone you see walking down the street. It's your neighbours, your kids and your grandparents. White people pictured with raided food have been filmed and described in pitying terms, remarking on the misery of having to scavenge, whilst black Americans are immediately described as looters.
It's breathtaking. Dumfounding. Human horror in the first world on a scale that is unimaginable.
Every woman with a child, a guy, stricken with shock and desperation stuck outside the city unable to fulfil his promse to his 5 year old daughter to come and get her the fuck out, in the brief moments he managed to snatch with her on a mobile phone, because the army won't let him...; every baby, limp with dehydration, having had no formula for 5 days... what the hell... What in hell's name can your reaction be as a parent to that? The veneer of civilisation that we live with is but a veil.
What will this do to the American psyche in the short and long term? Please... please let it wake people up. Please. If this can't, then what can?
I'm not going to post much else about it after this 3 days of TV reaction, given that other people more involved have much more to say that makes sense. My context is filtered through news.
Posted by cait at September 5, 2005 12:21 AM