In the Background

Clusterfuck Nation's Jim Kunstler is sounding pretty grim on the outcomes of the Katrina debacle. Can anyone deny that this is ominous stuff? Probably the worst disaster (natural + manmade) to hit the nation, dealing a staggering body punch to the energy sector, at a time when we may have already reached the peak oil summit, after which, we are likely to find the downward slope difficult and expensive to negotiate. What we need is vision and leadership, a retooling of our democratic system. We need to prioritize the things that matter and discard the rest. We need to conserve, plan ahead, save and produce real things for real people. It would take vision, leadership, and imagination to get there, but the Bush family has never made "the vision thing" its strongpoint.

Then you remind yourself that the congress, executive, and judicial branches are controlled by a class of people who've invested themselves in the very policies that have marched us into the muck and left us to bloat in the humid sun (metaphorically and literally), and you know the dauphin and his minions will never be converted or persuaded to stop believing in that strange brew of end-times prophecy and free-market profligacy. It can't continue the way it's going, and yet it continues.

As the Katrina story shifts spin cycles from disaster rescue drama to morbid body tallies and finger-pointing contests, I don't want to forget what promises to be the bigger picture: the diaspora of a city's poor people (will they ever come back?), the economic impact (on jobs and energy especially), and the inevitable hog trough of graft and insider chicanery to come. Who will profit from this human misery? Follow the money....