Waves Of Despair
I suppose that everyone has his or her particular nightmare. You know, the one where you wake up in a pool of icy sweat, breathing heavily, heart pounding like bass line of “I Wanna Be Sedated.” Mine is tidal waves. I have dreamed of tidal waves since I was a child.
This doesn’t make me fear the water or the beach — I live just blocks from the beach in a prime earthquake zone. It isn’t really about tidal waves. It’s a dream of being engulfed, drowned by something huge and unstoppable that is out of my control.
The real thing, of course, is a living nightmare for those who went through it and those who are dealing with the aftermath. It is, as president Clinton so prosaically (yet so perfectly) observed, “like a horror movie.” How else would this culture relate to such a huge and terrible thing except to relate it to the entertainment nightmares we have seen so many times, sitting in the dark, clutching our popcorn, scared and yet not really? I suspect that most of us saw 9/11 the same way. Except, of course, those who actually went through it. For the victims it isn’t a reality TV show or a shared “event” or even a nightmare. It is horribly, painfully, shockingly real.
As I sit here I have Capitol Gang on in the backround where flatulent hack Robert Novak is making lame excuses for Codpiece’s lazy, half hearted response by claiming that the criticism is part of a long standing desire of socialists to transfer wealth from the rich countries to the poor. This is not the first time he’s made that charge:
NOVAK: So, you think — you think it is the obligation — it’s very interesting. I always love — I always love to get this insight into your thinking.
You’re my congresswoman, and I’d really like to know what you’re thinking. Do you think that it is the obligation of the United States to take its wealth and transfer it to the Third World? Is that what you’re saying?
NORTON: I certainly think it’s the obligation of the United States to share its wealth with the Third World in a time of the most horrible disaster in memory. Yes, I do think so.
Of course, he isn’t alone in this thinking. On the very same show you had Jim Gilmore, erstwhile chairman of the RNC saying that the American taxpayers were already overburdened:
BEGALA: Now, Governor, let me raise an issue that I raised on this broadcast a week ago, before the disaster of America and our president, rather, our president welshing on America’s obligations to help the poor. This is a story that was in “The New York Times” last week. “With the budget deficit growing and President Bush promising to reduce spending, the administration has told representatives of several charities it was unable to honor some earlier promises. The cutbacks, estimated by some charities to add up to $100 million, come at a time when the number of hungry in the world is rising for the first time in years. As a result, Save Our Children, Catholic Relief Services and other charities have suspended or limited programs intended to help the poor feed themselves.”
Now, what would Jesus do? Would he welsh on $100 million?
(APPLAUSE)
GILMORE: You know…
BEGALA: What would he do, Governor?
GILMORE: Here’s my answer.
BEGALA: Would he lie to Christian groups like this?
GILMORE: A president has to look at entire big picture of the obligations that the United States has both domestically and foreign. We have education commitments. We have infrastructure commitments. We have humanitarian commitments around the world. Frankly, an awful lot is loaded on the taxpayer of the United States.
This was last Tuesday. The day that Bush emerged from the brush and announced that something serious had occurred — four days late. We’ve seen them loosen the pursestrings a bit since then. Apparently, it has been decided that the American taxpayer can afford to help out after all. But it’s an interesting insight into their black souls isn’t it?
I particularly like the contribution from the Ayn Rand institute, repository of wisdom for the rightwing bodice ripping set:
Every dollar the government hands out as foreign aid has to be extorted from an American taxpayer first. Year after year, for decades, the government has forced American taxpayers to provide foreign aid to every type of natural or man-made disaster on the face of the earth: from the Marshall Plan to reconstruct a war-ravaged Europe to the $15 billion recently promised to fight AIDS in Africa to the countless amounts spent to help the victims of earthquakes, fires and floods–from South America to Asia.
[…]
The reason politicians can get away with doling out money that they have no right to and that does not belong to them is that they have the morality of altruism on their side. According to altruism–the morality that most Americans accept and that politicians exploit for all it’s worth–those who have more have the moral obligation to help those who have less. This is why Americans–the wealthiest people on earth–are expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it. It is Americans’ acceptance of altruism that renders them morally impotent to protest against the confiscation and distribution of their wealth. It is past time to question–and to reject–such a vicious morality that demands that we sacrifice our values instead of holding on to them.
The favorite political philosophy of teenagers expressed by someone who writes like one. Still, you can see the threads of the impractical Randian selfishness in Novak and Gilmore’s words. These people really don’t give a shit. And they can’t quite cover their lack of basic human decency. It’s just too fundamental to who they are.
CNN (which by the way has seen a huge boost in ratings over Fox during the past week, proving once again that FOX is not a news channel, it’s a partisan political channel) has been on the disaster 24/7 letting the story unfold naturally with footage and stories and tales of heroism and horror. That our president was unable to grasp the significance of these pictures and these stories and feel empathy for the victims is bad enough. That he didn’t see the opportunity to mend some of the wounds he has created and allowed to fester is a failure of leadership so profound that I wonder if it may not define his presidency.
But then, he’s never been very swift off the mark in a crisis, has he? The Mahablog reminds us that he sat paralyzed reading about goats to second graders when informed that the United States was under attack. He then dithered about for hours flying all over the country while Dick Cheney issued orders to shoot down aircraft. There was also this:
The President of the United States made no comment on November 2, 2003, which was the bloodiest day so far for U.S. troops in Iraq. On that day, 16 U.S. soldiers died and 20 were wounded in a single helicopter attack. Three other soldiers died in Iraq that day in separate incidents.
President Bush was resting on his Texas ranch that day, a Sunday, enjoying a “down” day between campaign appearances on Saturday and Monday.
The White House staff was reluctant to involve the President in a “politically perilous fray,” an Associated Press story said. A White House spokesperson read a generic statement to the press about continuing attacks on Americans. The spokesperson declined to comment on the President’s personal reactions to the tragedy of that day.
It’s a pattern with him. He is slow to react. (Compare and contrast with the now universally despised John Kerry.) I wonder just when he would have come forward if Bill Clinton hadn’t been asked about it on a BBC radio show and answered like a normal human being, thereby forcing the Republicans’ right knees to jerk convulsively and hit them right between the eyes.
This disaster has made my tidal wave dreams more turbulent than they’ve ever been and it’s not because of the frightening images of the tsunami surge and the people running for their lives. It’s because we are ruled by people with no empathy, no competence and no limits. It’s because, more than ever, I feel engulfed by powerful forces over which I have no control.