katrina & god, my ass

i just posted a comment in response to this guy's commentary regarding katrina. holy shit, did that guy make me mad. i had felt reasonably reasonable regarding katrina matters. but then i guess i hit a wall and ended up in some kind of celine dion emota-spaz [worth watching].

hate his suggestion that there's too much posturing and finger pointing. like so many others, he points out the looting and other bad behaviour as a demonstration of the "true face of Modern Man." as if that has anything to do with anything. overall, he wondered where on earth is the grace. myself, i consider it a shocking lack of grace that caused this fuckery in the first place.

people want to believe – in order to remain more comfortable – that these things are of nature and are compelled by forces we cannot understand. it happened with last year’s tsunami, and it happens all the time – hoisting out god when there’s too much nasty shit to contend with.

it was a fucking hurricane people: we know them, name them, and track them all the livelong day. we are rich and smart and powerful and have at our disposal the most sophisticated machinery, technology and intellectual capacity to make things smooth and safe all the fucking time. i can get the temperature and weather conditions for my city updated every fucking hour on the internet, so it’s not that big a leap that a few things went awry down there. so let’s start talking hard about this shit.

there are only 2 ways to play this: god and politics. in the us, god is trotted out only when convenient. this is not that fucking complicated: only when it suits does america separate the two. some suggest that katrina not be made political, or at least not yet – these are the same ones who feign anger about the separation of church and state but who relish the manipulation of the political out it provides. like now.

it’s the same ongoing festival of hypocrisy down there. people upset by the politicking & exploiting of katrina for political gain are the same ones who trot out god every 5 fucking minutes for their own purposes. oh really, no one is to blame? this was purely an act of god? are you fucking kidding? if you want to talk about god here, you best be prepared to go all the way. if it was indeed god’s will that katrina decimate a region and leave millions to languish, why do you think that was?

ok, i’ll just say it: katrina may very well be the penultimate in karmic retribution. oh sure, even karma can fuck up once in awhile, and katrina did devastate too many of the wrong people. but then again, perhaps that was part of her point.

people who would rather the whole world pray instead of rage are likely the same ones who took one look at that flight manual and whispered, “gosh, it’s written in arabic.” i mean, how long until the cia and department of homeland security announce finding links from the katrina source directly to a cave in rural afghanistan?

leave it to an indignant american to overstate that america is not the only bastion of hypocrisy and not “alone in its disease”. funny that gets said now. we’ll hold the entire planet to an absurd standard so long as it suits our agenda, but during a time of crisis and glaring culpability, it’s gosh guys, guess we’re not perfect. but hey, neither the fuck are you, so there!

americans are going to have to understand, you get what you pay for. you bought shitty leadership that turned you against the world. while you’re wondering why the world hates you back, you re-elect him. there’s a reason why half the globe is probably thrilled about katrina. some are dancing because it saves them a suicide bomber, yes. but mostly, i think people are sick of the suffering inflicted by america, and the superiority with which it is exacted. i think we are profoundly saddened by the pain there, but can’t help our inherent taste for retribution. now THAT is nobody’s fault: this whole thing was political long before the twin towers fell (which, by the way, we knew about before it happened too).

the planet is on fire, everyone’s up in arms or carrying arms, america is sinking, ray nagin is losing his mind, and everyone else is just utterly sick of the bullshit. an entire region of the states is covered in toxic water. a few looters are stealing the attention when meanwhile, back at the stench-filled stadiums, girls are getting raped in the bathrooms.

that karma is one crazy son of a bitch.