The Thin Veneer of America

"Welcome to our school," I said to a man, introduced as someone who had fled New Orleans. I was in the office to pick up a kiddo for a doctor's appointment.
"For the moment," he said, standing and shaking my head with a smile. He had that fit, quick look of someone with the time to take care of himself, and was well, if casually, dressed.
"Not planning on staying?"
"Well," he said, "I'm heading back next week. I think I'll be doing a lot of flying between there and here until we can get our house back in shape."
I blinked. "Your stuff is okay?"
He nodded. "I hear that my house stayed dry, and I know my office is in good shape."
"What do you d?"
"I'm a lawyer," he said. "Hiked up a lot of floors, but my business only needs power and air conditioning and then I'll be set to go."

Last Sunday I had dinner with a friend who's a radio reporter. The stories he told of the horrors in and around the flooded, ground floor areas of New Orleans are the stuff of future congressional investigations.

This morning CNN and MSNBC were running articles showing the reopening of the French Quarter in New Orleans complete with clean, dry white folk sipping their white, imported wine. From my point of view (and others) this looks like a lousy piece of PR by the White House and Louisiana city and state authorities.

I understand that New Orleans needs to return to some kind of normalcy. But feeding the America delusion that 'it's just those folks,' or 'it's not that bad,' or 'it'll be all right' are causing further damage to the hundreds of thousands of people, people who could never afford to eat at French Quarter restaurants or that high-floor attorney.

An indication of how cavalierly and cynically the government is using this disaster is in how it is pushing reformulation of environmental regulations and not raising taxes (letting taxes such as the Estate Tax, previously critical one's to the Republican agenda continue, an action tantamount to admitting the tax is, indeed, needed).

Sometimes a trauma, even a national one, needs to be exposed to full light of day and, like an infected cut, cleaned out. The scenes played out in the first days of the disaster show just how fragile our "American society" really is in the face of disaster. The arguements of whether it's the fault of the federal, state, or local governments are specious and, from what I can tell, indended to deflect criticism instead of invite investigation. And without the therapy, the catharsis, of a complete, open and impartial investigation, I fear we will never be able to fully heal from this scar still festering in our country's soft underbelly.