http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0601363_pf.html

washingtonpost.com
The 'Stuff Happens' Presidency

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, September 7, 2005; A25



We're not number one. We're not even close.

By which measures, precisely, do we lead the world? Caring for our countrymen? You jest. A first-class physical infrastructure? Tell that to New Orleans. Throwing so much money at the rich that we've got nothing left over to promote the general welfare? Now you're talking.

The problem goes beyond the fact that we can't count on our government to be there for us in catastrophes. It's that a can't-do spirit, a shouldn't-do spirit, guides the men who run the nation. Consider the congressional testimony of Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush's 2000 campaign manager, who assumed the top position at FEMA in 2001. He characterized the organization as "an oversized entitlement program," and counseled states and cities to rely instead on "faith-based organizations . . . like the Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster Service."

Is it any surprise, then, that the administration's response to the devastation in New Orleans is of a piece with its response to the sacking of Baghdad once our troops arrived? "Stuff happens" was the way Don Rumsfeld described the destruction of Baghdad's hospitals, universities and museums while American soldiers stood around. Now stuff has happened in New Orleans, too, even as FEMA was turning away offers of assistance. This is the stuff-happens administration. And it's willing, apparently, to sacrifice any claim America may have to national greatness rather than inconvenience the rich by taxing them to build a more secure nation.

As a matter of social policy, the catastrophic lack of response in New Orleans is exceptional only in its scale and immediacy. When it comes to caring for our fellow countrymen, we all know that America has never ranked very high. We are, of course, the only democracy in the developed world that doesn't offer health care to its citizens as a matter of right. We rank 34th among nations in infant mortality rates, behind such rival superpowers as Cyprus, Andorra and Brunei.

But these are chronic conditions, and even many of us who argue for universal health coverage have grown inured to that distinctly American indifference to the common good, to our radical lack of solidarity with our fellow citizens. Besides, the poor generally have the decency to die discreetly, and discretely -- not conspicuously, not in droves. Come rain or come shine, we leave millions of beleaguered Americans to fend for themselves on a daily basis. It's just a lot more noticeable in a horrific rain, and when the ordinary lack of access to medical care is augmented by an extraordinary lack of access to emergency services.

Even if we'll never win the national-greatness sweepstakes for solidarity, though, we've long been the model of the world in matters infrastructural, in roads, bridges and dams and the like. But the America in which Eisenhower the Good decreed the construction of the interstate highway system now seems a far-off land in which even conservatives believed in public expenditures for the public good. The radical-capitalist conservatives of the past quarter-century not only haven't supported the public expenditures, they don't even believe there is such a thing as the public good. Let the Dutch build their dikes through some socialistic scheme of taxing and spending; that isn't the American way. Here, the business of government is to let the private sector create wealth -- even if that wealth doesn't circulate where it's most needed. So George W. Bush threw trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, and what did they do with it? Did the Walton family up in Bentonville raise the levees in New Orleans? Did the Bass family over in Texas write a tax-deductible check to the Mennonites for the billions of dollars they would need to rescue the elderly from inundated nursing homes?

Even now, with bedraggled rescuers pulling decomposed bodies from the muck of New Orleans, Bill Frist, the moral cretin who runs the U.S. Senate, wanted its first order of business this week to be the permanent repeal of the estate tax, until the public outcry persuaded him to change course. The Republicans profess belief in trickle-down, but what they've given us is the Flood.

The world looks on in stunned amazement, unable to understand how a once great nation has grown so indifferent not just to its poor and its blacks but even to the most rudimentary self-preservation. Some of it is institutional racism, but the primary culprit is the economic libertarianism that the president still espouses whenever he sells his Social Security snake oil. It's that libertarianism, more than anything else, that has transformed a great city into an immense morgue.

But, hey -- stuff happens.

Did anyone here (besides myself) see the play, "Stuff Happens"?

Bush has flopped at everything he lays his hands on, both before, and after he became President. Looking at his track record, I don't understand how any American can honestly claim that the America that we all have known has not been destroyed by Bush, and his arrogant lying administration.
If people don't wake up now, I don't know what it will take. It is strange how he can fool so many people. Even if he was caught in the act of personally dropping a bomb on a major American city, a lot of people would believe it was for the safety of the Country.

No, I didn't. But this is an excellent article. Thanks ulrika.

It rather reminds you about the time Bush went on a long holiday after a memo entitled 'Bin Laden determined to strike America' (or somesuch title) was going around the upper escalons of the political sphere. Stuff happens, so we just sit and wait for it to come along.

On thetruthseeker.com there is a brilliant article called 'The Mirror in the Water.' It compares GWB to Nero (I think he was the one who fiddled while Rome burned.) He also compares him to a horse that was made a Roman Consul by the mad leaders in the Roman Empire. In other words the blame can hardly be laid on a man who has not the capacity to lead. Reminding me of the articles I read recently that said the further GWB is away from any event the better, he should remain on holiday and let the real leaders take up the challenges.

Sorry, Snuffysmith, thank YOU.

lazyboy... are you referring to the article by John Kaminski?
on
http://www.rense.com/general67/mirror.htm

Yes, Wundermaus, I found it in thetruthseeker.com. What do you think of it?

Thank you for posting this link lazyboy... the prose of this poet/writer, John Kaminski, communicates to me on many levels... profound, insightful, disturbing, and truthful; internationally / universally both personally and in private. Leave it to an expression of dreams and visions to reveal our shattered holographics of human reality and folly.

Hopefully others in this forum will ponder its contents and meanings.

In The Mirror Of The Water
New Orleans as a portrait
of ourselves and our future...
By John Kaminski
9-7-5
http://www.rense.com/general67/mirror.htm

You're welcome, Wundermaus. Thank you for finding it on another website, as thetruthseeker is too much for some people.