The Perfect Storm

Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque has an excellent commentary on the destruction of New Orleans. Pull quote: "But as culpable, criminal and loathsome as the Bush Administration is, it is only the apotheosis of an overarching trend in American society that has been gathering force for decades: the destruction of the idea of a common good, a public sector whose benefits and responsibilities are shared by all, and directed by the consent of the governed. For more than 30 years, the corporate Right has waged a relentless and highly focused campaign against the common good, seeking to atomize individuals into isolated "consumer units" whose political energies - kept deliberately underinformed by the ubiquitous corporate media - can be diverted into emotionalized "hot button" issues (gay marriage, school prayer, intelligent design, flag burning, welfare queens, drugs, porn, abortion, teen sex, commie subversion, terrorist threats, etc., etc.) that never threaten Big Money's bottom line." New Orleans, a city suffering from social breakdown, thanks to Mother Nature and good old fashioned man-made negligence, is being drowned as a result. Remember when Kurtz sacrifices the cow at the end of Apocalypse Now? It's kinda like that.