I used to live in New Orleans, and it was a horrifying thing to see pictures of my old neighborhood after Katrina–the water was up to the top of the street signs.
It was breathtaking to watch the hubris as Bush had generators light up St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter to serve as a backdrop to a speech, then flipped the lights off and returned to things which interested him more than the loss of New Orleans. The Crescent City is, I would argue, the greatest incubator of American artistic innovation, and Bush’s inattention has gone largely unchallenged. People remember, I’m sure, but it’s hard to keep your mind on anything distant in our culture, where newness and freshness of information is often more important than the content.
One thing I have learned since 2000 is that no matter how low I think BushCo. will go, they will shock me by going lower. I had a sinking feeling (must be those years in New Orleans!) as I watched next to nothing happen for month after month in the Crescent City that the Republican-led government wasn’t going to do anything to bring the New Orleanian diaspora home. And believe me, for New Orleanians, living anywhere else is, to put it mildly, distressing.
I hate to be this cynical, but my cynicism has yet to go unrewarded by Bush on every front, from destroying habeas corpus to torture and the secrecy of everything from actual secrets to the brand of toilet paper in the West Wing john. I’m sure I’m not the first to ask, but considering this post over at DailyKos detailing the Louisiana Republican Party’s plan to destroy the Louisiana Democratic Party in 2007, I have to bring it up:
Are the Republicans and Bush ignoring New Orleans because that approach keeps one of the greatest populations of Democratic voters in the South from reconvening?
Yes, Virginia, they would do that.
