TheBanyanTree: The Underbelly

[Margaret R. Kramer]

I finally stopped watching the news.  I skimmed through the articles in the
paper yesterday.  I had to pull myself away from the hurricane coverage,
because I was getting too mad and upset.  I could drive down there and find
some volunteer organization to hook up with and help out and show myself
than I can be a better person than the one who will stay at home, go back to
work on Tuesday, and continue to pay her mortgage and her bills.  Take care
of my interests first, and then I’ll worry about other people’s problems is
what I usually do.  So it’s kind of silly that I get so emotional over
something I won’t do anything about anyway.

Ray and I watched TV incessantly after 9/11.  We watched and watched and
cried and cried.  And then, after about a week, one day we just turned the
TV off and went to a movie.  Then 9/11’s horror began to fade away.  I
imagine Katrina’s will, too.

I think Katrina exposed America’s underbelly.  We are reluctant to help
people who are poor and have dark skins.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist
to figure out that the people who stayed in New Orleans to ride out the
storm were most likely the poorest and the ones who sick or disabled.
Somehow, in our convoluted thinking, they deserve to die, because they
couldn’t leave.

We don’t like dark skinned people having weapons.  Nothing scares white
people more than blacks carrying guns.  The Bush administration spent a lot
of energy pointing the finger at the “looters” instead of sending help
(because they couldn’t blame Katrina on the Al-Quaeda terrorists).  There
will always be looters in these situations, because that’s the way some
people react to a crisis that they’re powerless to change.  And not all the
“looters” with weapons were blacks.  I’m sure a few white people were
violent, too.  Deal with it, but focus on the vast majority of people who
are helping each other and need help, too.  A news broadcast showed the
difference between how a black couple was labeled in a story; they were
“looters” versus a white couple who were “taking needed supplies” from a
store.

We also have seen the “slow as molasses” response from all levels of
government.  First, there was a lack in preparation, even though everybody
and their brother knew that Katrina was a force to be reckoned with.  There
was a lack of coordination.  There was a lack of money, because it’s more
important to send to money to that worthless war in Iraq, where the USA has
dismantled and destroyed a country, than to give ourselves help here.  And
let’s remember 9/11.  Where were the vast majority of the terrorists from?
Iraq?  No, I think most of them were from Saudi Arabia.  So, let’s attack a
country just for the sake of revenge, even though that country had nothing
to do with 9/11 or had weapons of mass destruction.  Remember, Bush doesn’t
lie, right?

And the gas prices are rising.  Don’t tell me that it’s due to Katrina.  Isn
’t it Labor Day weekend?  Don’t the gas prices always rise before a holiday
weekend?  And now the oil executives have the wonderful windfall of Katrina
as another excuse to raise prices.  Watch, they’ll drop back just after the
Labor Day weekend so all of us dumbo Americans can continue to buy our gas
guzzling SUVs.

The underbelly of our country . . . we’re fat and out of shape, almost 25%
of us are considered not to be just overweight, but obese.  How many people
do you think died because they were too heavy or out of shape to get out of
the World Trade Center towers on 9/11?  We sit on our butts and watch mind
numbing shows like Fear Factor and Survivor and CSI.  Academically, we can’t
even compete with the rest of world anymore.  We vote for politicians
because they look good on TV and not whether they have any intelligence.
Our top executives have taken millions of dollars from pension funds and we
just give them a slap on the wrist.  The underbelly of America just keeps
getting bigger and bigger, just like all the beer bellies we see parading on
the street.

OK, I’m done ranting now.  Some of us will use Katrina as a lesson, to try
to improve ourselves, and for others, the horror will fade away, and we’ll
go back to the greedy, fat, and gas guzzling people we always were.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.  ~Mark Twain