We would do well to remember that these jackals are on a mission. No matter how many times they are exposed as liars and deceivers, they continue across the field of life like a hoard of grasshoppers, leaving stripped and broken humanity in their wake. They are roiling the waters of the Mississippi by portraying FEMA as dim-witted, absent-minded, rudderless.
And it's working. The media, Internet, Congress, you, me -- everybody -- all baying for Bush to dump the hapless FEMA director, Michael Brown, a Bush crony and former counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association. We are all outraged, not at Bush for dropping the ball; for being so chillingly disconnected from those he is charged to protect -- but at Brown, who is a perfect lightning rod and, if need be, a fall guy.
He's also a man with a plan.
Take a look at these headlines -- FEMA refusing all offered rescue assistance from Amtrack to experienced firefighters, FEMA not delivering on promises, FEMA barring delivery of desperately needed food or water to frightened and bewildered victims of Katrina, FEMA telling First Responders not to "respond" to the disaster. Does anybody but me see a pattern here? Is it possible for an emergency aid organization to show up at the scene only to refuse all offers of aid? Does McDonald's cook up a bunch of hamburgers and then lock its doors to its hungry patrons?
FEMA is the Patriot Act on crack. Once its powers are unleashed, Oliver North's REX 84 "exercise" will become a reality. The Constitution will be suspended and FEMA will have the right to detain or seize the property of anyone even suspected of engaging in, or who might be thinking of conspiring with others to engage in acts of espionage or sabotage. REX 84 also advocated rounding up and transferring to "assembly centers or relocation camps" of at least 21 million American Negroes in the event of massive rioting or disorder, not unlike the rounding up of the Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
The actual number of displaced New Orleans residents is unknown. Overnight, they became "refugees," and hundreds of thousands packed into the Super Dome or sat sweltering in the sun on roads and bridges during a nightmarish week of waiting for help that did not come, while political fat cats finger-pointed and accused each other of playing the "blame" game. Finally, their military liberators herded them onto buses and planes, refusing to reveal their destination -- husbands and wives separated, families split apart -- and disappeared to "assembly centers or location camps" throughout the United States.
Bush, who once asked Sojourners' Reverend Jim Wallis how to talk to poor people because he had never been around one, has once again dropped the ball. Telling Americans whose homes, jobs, loved ones, whose whole lives were washed away in a single night to "hang in there, and don't buy gasoline if you can't afford it," before cutting out to a birthday party in Arizona falls a bit short of his presidential promise to "protect the American people."
It's unfortunate that it took a tragedy like Katrina for middle- and lower-class America to finally come to grips with where they will fit into the capitalist White supremacist New World Disorder. Americans now know that Bush is incapable of leading. They know he's too arrogant and stubborn to follow. They also know it's time for him to get out of the way -- before more of us are trampled, displaced, abandoned, and destroyed, not only here but throughout the world.
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