"Partisan Potshots"

[pameladean]

Behind the cut-tag is a comment I posted in and then deleted from a discussion on pegkerr's journal, since it was a bit rude to another of her commenters whom I don't even know.



I don't understand, not remotely, the attitude that one must not discuss the causes of the disaster and how the relief efforts are being botched. None of us here is laboring in horrible heat to help anybody. The nation is not one huge entity that is incapable of multitasking, though certainly some politicians like to talk as if it were when it suits them.

My fear is that if a great fuss is not made now, it will not be made at all, that those responsible will never be held accountable. People forget the most astounding things.

I also really, really resent the idea that any criticism of the people in charge is automatically a partisan potshot rather than a rational assessment of the situation. This idea is a standard tactic of the present administration, and I don't see why they should be allowed to get away with it.

I am extremely suspicious and disturbed at the continual efforts to stifle discourse. The entire nation cannot concentrate on rescue efforts; we are not a hive mind or a gigantic octopus. So this whole "not now, not now" with its underlying flavor of "Behave, be decent, don't make a fuss" does not impress me. It's evilly reminiscent of the remonstrances that were directed to me as a child, specifically as a female child, and that are directed at women to this day from certain quarters. I don't respond favorably to it at all. I'm tired of decency's being used as a great big shield for keeping culpable and privileged people comfortable. I don't think that everybody who invokes it is doing this consciously, and nor do I think that everybody who invokes it is having that effect, but in this case, I think that's most of the effect.

If you want to make people speak decently about the disaster, it makes more sense to target the people who are mewling and blathering on about how the people stranded in NO "chose" to remain there. Stifle the victim-blaming, but not the government-blaming.


P.

Comments

[chaoticgoodnik.livejournal.com]

Word.

[misia.livejournal.com]

I owe you a drink. Or a pan of vegan brownies, your choice. Because I've been saying this to people in person for several days now. Thank you for stating it so well.

[pameladean]

Brrrroooooonnnnnniiiiieeeeessssss.

I'm not sure I deserve anything much -- having read LJ and posted this in a furious rush, I then saw that people all over are saying much the same. Though without, actually, the feminist tinge. So sure, okay, if you want.

P.

[raphaela.livejournal.com]

That's not rude. That's honest.

I am really shocked by the government's (both local to NOLA and federal) reaction to the disaster. I probably shouldn't be, but I am. As always, I am hopeful that there is more going on that I don't know about than there is what I'm seeing in the news, but it seems plain indecent to me.

I am hopeful that more efforts are under way than we know, and that there are valid reasons behind what is happening, but that does nothing to assauge my outrage at what I have seen.

[pameladean]

The worst part of the news aside from the actual suffering of the stranded people is the continual stream of reports that this and that agency is standing ready, has been standing ready for days, to do what's necessary, but has not been authorized. Over and over. Stuff was held up for days in Washington, D.C, stuff that had to be authorized by the federal government. Local government hasn't seemed able to figure out what they could ask for or how to ask either. Once things are asked for, they are right there ready to go, so I hope for a huge improvement soon, but argh.

P.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

That's the thing. The Federal and state-level mechanisms utterly broke down -- but they're preventing the local and individual helpers from picking up the slack. Over and over I'm hearing of people who wanted to help but were forbidden access.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

So, you're siding with such liberal partisans as Newt Gingrich and the editors of the Dallas Morning News!

[pameladean]

I never thought I would miss the old Republication Party. Never.

P.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

testify.

[akamarykate.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying this; though my original question about the flags was just a question, not a criticism, I don't see why we *can't* speak up about problems. How else are they supposed to be solved?

I'm tired of decency's being used as a great big shield for keeping culpable and privileged people comfortable. I don't think that everybody who invokes it is doing this consciously, and nor do I think that everybody who invokes it is having that effect, but in this case, I think that's most of the effect.

Yes, that's it exactly.

[pameladean]

That part of the discussion was actually fascinating to me. I find most uses of the American flag make me slightly queasy and I tend to ignore them. So it was actually news to me that putting the flag at half-mast is basically for people above a certain level in the political schema and has nothing much to do with serious widespread tragedy.

P.

What BS

[(Anonymous)]

If I recall correctly, the flag was at half-mast for a month after 9/11. And if they can't lower to half-mast this week, with what has to be a comparable, if not much worse, casualty level, this just shows what incredible hypocrites they are.

Anybody with a flag, let's fly it at half-mast in defiance of the hypocrites.

Re: What BS

[pameladean]

I don't recall, frankly. And I don't have a flag. If I did have one, I wouldn't want to fly it. It's got too much awful disgrace bound up in it right now.

P.

Re: What BS

[chaoticgoodnik.livejournal.com]

Restaurants in my area (Pittsburgh PA) had their flags at half mast when I was out yesterday.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

There's plenty of blame to go around. I think we could stand with our 360-degree vision of hindsight and say "what were they thinking????" of any number of planning decisions.

I can think of the following decisions that in hindsight seem to me to have been wrong, given the fact that everyone knew the city wasn't protected from a Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane:

* Assuming that all able-bodied people who couldn't leave town would go to the Superdome or other shelters before the storm. They didn't, putting a *huge* search and rescue burden on the emergency planners.

* Assuming that the people who went to those shelters would be able to take five days' supplies for each adult and child. This was particularly unrealistic (hindsight tells me) since it was the end of the month, when anyone who's ever been on welfare knows there's no money to buy anything, much less the kinds of expensive foods that would be needed in the superdome.

* Assuming that the sanitation facilities in the Superdome etc were adequate.

* Assuming that communications would be adequate among the complex network of government operatives. They weren't. The NOPD was operating with no information.

* Not declaring martial law much earlier. This would have allowed for more troop mobilization and would have put authority in the hands of the folks who had functioning communications equipment.

* Assuming that the worst was over because the water didn't go over the levees.

And, of course, there's the overarching question of not spending more money on protecting that crazy below-sea-level city if one is going to have that crazy below-sea-level city at all.

One of the visuals that hit me in the solar plexus was the one of the dozens, perhaps hundreds of school buses in a flooded parking lot in New Orleans. Why weren't those buses filled with people on Saturday and Sunday getting them out of harm's way? Of course, without the benefit of hindsight, would folks have been willing to be bused out of New Orleans to shelters god-knows-where?

Plenty of blame to go around. I'd prefer that there not be a whole lot of finger pointing because I think it would be more productive to focus on solutions, but I accept the fact that there's a lot of anger that has to be honored.

[pameladean]

I'm sure some people wouldn't have wanted to go, but since the vast majority seemed simply unable to because they had no transportation, the number of people stranded would at least have been seriously reduced.

I'd be less interested in finger-pointing if there were not already so much effort being exerted to shove the pointing finger in some other direction. It's no solution if people who messed up this time get appointed to other positions where they don't know what they're doing but are praised anyway. Again, this kind of nonsense is a hallmark of the present administration. They fire people who disagree with them and they reward people who agree, even if those people have completely screwed up. If they want to stop that, I'll be happy to reconsider the finger-pointing.

P.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

several of your assumptions would have been extremely foolish to maintain, because new orleans had a trial run of katrina in the form of ivan. from the looks of it, nothing significant changed in the plans. lack of funding or laissez-faire politics? i'm sure we'll find out.

municipal and state incompetence doesn't absolve incompetence on the part of a gutted and mismanaged FEMA, of course, and the person who appointed his unqualified cronies to head, of all things, a disaster relief agency. i hope americans are learning this week that they can't trust this particular government to come to their aid swiftly if the shit should hit the fan, whether directed by nature or terrorism.

and to think that this, of all things, is what a government should be good at -- isn't that the republican view of old? it's certainly mine. finding solutions? as if that could be done without assessing responsibility. (not blame; responsibility.)

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I repeat: plenty of blame to go around.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Passed by this again. May I confess that I don't understand what you're saying? They're not my assumptions. They're assumptions that I infer have been made, based on the events as they transpired. In hindsight, they make no sense. But someone decided the Superdome was a good idea and that the evacuees would have enough supplies with them.

[pameladean]

"Your" in the sense that you listed them.

You're being agreed with, I think.

P.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay.

I was reading that disaster preparedness plan again. If it had been thought out in advance, I think the idea of loading evacuees on buses and shipping them out in lots of 100-150 (two to three buses) to predetermined shelter sites, churches or schools, might have gotten at least half the folks out in advance, might have lured more folks to the shelters, might have cut the search-and-rescue job and freed up police to keep order in those last resort shelters.

At the very least, we'll know that you can't put 25,000 in a place where the lights and bathrooms are likely to fail without some pretty heavy-duty authority figures.

What were they (locals, state, FEMA, etc.) THINKING??? Not that I'd have planned any better without the benefit of hindsight.

[pameladean]

They should have had hindsight, because of Ivan. But they seem to have devoted most of it to working on getting more people out by car. Not that this is a bad thing, but it shouldn't have been the only thing.

I will add that the entire NO evacuation plan was privatized after 2001, as part of gutting FEMA, and that I don't think this was at all a good idea.

P.

[sraun]

To me, there was this assumption that the Superdome would continue to have power, water & sewage service - and I can't understand where that assumption came from.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I really don't know.

In retrospect, someone serious from the feds should have been reality-checking the local and state plans. But the reality seems (to me) to be that local and state didn't follow their own disaster plans, and by the time they asked for federal help it was too late to get it there immediately. It's nobody's fault and everybody's fault. Alas...

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

Yes. Just yes.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying that. We need to ask questions now, not a year from now when another crisis, or more likely, "crisis" will obscure this one.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, yes. Exactly.

K.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

1. It's a code for "we need to change the focus of the discussion from how bad we screwed up to how bad you are for pointing it out.:"

2. Your comment isn't rude, and it would do the world some good for you to post it where it belongs.

B

[pameladean]

My comment was rude in context. I did say that I was posting about the subject in my own journal, so people could follow me over here if they wanted to.

P.

[pameladean]

And on No. 1 -- yes, yes, exactly that's exactly why the tactic is so completely infuriating. It's a minor ghostly form of blaming the victim. "I'm not doing anything wrong, you are!"

P.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Pamela.

I think I almost had a stroke when that FEMA man--oh, what is his name? Michael?--kept talking about those who "chose to stay."

I've almost had a stroke several times this week, and have gone through lots of Kleenex.

Why? keeps going through my head.

And I want to pick up those babies and get them out of the sun.

[pameladean]

I know. You want to reach through the damn screen and DO SOMETHING.

Think how frustratend and furious the aid workers must be, stewing away outside the city and not allowed to do their jobs, when not doing their jobs means that people suffer and die.

P.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Absolutely right, though the "don't say anything bad" reaction from this administration and some of its supporters should come as no surprise to anyone.

I think there's more than enough blame to go around, and it doesn't all begin with the inception of this administration. But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be pointed out. "They screwed up too" is not a valid defense to "You screwed up."

[jfb.livejournal.com]

James Wolcott (http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/09/new_orleans_die.php): "There is no 'next week' when it comes to getting answers and fixing accountability for failure under this president. Next week never comes."

[seajules]

I'm tired of decency's being used as a great big shield for keeping culpable and privileged people comfortable.

Were those in charge behaving decently, I might be willing to grant them decency. As it is, I think the only decent thing to do is demand accountability, because government both local and national has shown an extreme tendency to slack off unless they are harassed into doing their damn jobs and watched closely while doing them.

It's not a blame game, because we are not questioning a situation in the past tense. It's a call to action, and when those in power fail to heed the call, it's not a sign that those calling should shut up. It's a sign those in power should not be.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Word.

[bigbrotherinlaw.livejournal.com]

Well, now there'll be a class A reason for the flag to be at half staff.

WHR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rehnquist) 10/1/1924-9/3/2005

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Yep!

Relief

[(Anonymous)]

I hope this is okay to post here. I saw that you had posted eariler with info for Noah's Wish; I'd have posted in that thread but this one seems more active. I thought you might like to know that people who evacuated but whose pets got left behind can call the LA SPCA and they may be able to save them. -Elizabeth
SPCA help for animalsFriday, 9:50 p.m.
>
> There's hope for stranded pets in the New Orleans area. The Louisiana
> SPCA, New Orleans' animal control agency, has begun rescuing pets from
> owners houses.
>
> Louisiana SPCA director Laura Maloney said shelter workers follow
> other agencies and crews through neighborhoods and rescue pets, some
> that are locked in houses. At the owners' request, "we break in," she
> said.
>
> Owners have to call or email the operation and give their name and
> address and information about where the pet is confined.
>
> The hotline number is: 1-225-578-6111.

Re: Relief

[pameladean]

Of course it is okay. Thank you.

I'll stick it in a new post; lots of people don't persevere in reading comments after a few days.

P.

[chaoticgoodnik.livejournal.com]

Similar sentiments to this post expressed elsewhere: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2061500

Thought you might find this to be interesting if you haven't seen it already.

[pameladean]

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

P.

[lcohen]

thank you for this.