Some meandering thoughts about nothing special

Katrina came and went. On the wake, leaving Mobile, AL, Biloxi, MS, and New Orleans, LA, devastated. While state government and local personnel were trying to take grasp of the situation, federal government stayed watching (assuming they were awake) for two days. Mr. President was busy talking about Iraq war. Only when he cut short his month long summer vacation by two days and headed back to DC and on the way, when the Air Force One was lowered little bit to have a look at situation in New Orleans, he realized that Katrina had hit the city. It must have looked like a small Atlantis. When he reached DC, he proclaimed that federal emergency management agencies were already depolyed and actively involved in rescue operations. And I think sank back to his old habit of indifference. It took another day of horrifying reporting on MSM (Mainstream Media) to wake him up from the reverie and remind him that without doing anything nothing is going to be alright. He went to ground and saw the ground reality on Friday, and realized why everybody is chastising him and his government's handling of the situation.

All these was bad. But one good thing that might come out of all this is an open discussion about class and race in America. Some people have already started talking about these issues. These issues were sort of taboo and whoever talks about these here in America was sure to be branded as a liberal. Talking about them is sure to raise questions about socialism and capitalism, American way of capitalism, etc. And these debates are harmful to maintain the American status quo and people in power donot want that to happen.

I myself have started thinking about this situation. I used to have a feeling that something is not right in America as a society and distribution of resources. A very small minority of people control vast majority of resources here, and size of the middle class is ever shrinking. When size of the high-class society increases, only middle class experiences the pressure. People is the lowest rung are already there and have almost nothing to lose by this increase. Many people I get in touch on day to day basis seem to be well off when compared with thirld-world yardstick. That is the only yardstick I have as I don't know how people judge economic well-offness in America, excepting the economic jargon of 'consumer price index', of 'gross domestic product', and what not. Because those indices shows an aggregate behavior and life is not aggregate, and society has so many ugly details that make it so complex and unpredictable, and interesting also. Smoothing those details may be good for policy making and for sloganeering, is not helpful for the life. Sadly, those people have no say over policy, distribution of resources, among other things. Middle-class here in America, victim of the society, just live their life. If something happens, this class has enough resource to take care of themselves, but not the others. When high-class also turns its head to look in some other direction, it is the people on the lowest rung that get trapped. And that is what happened here in Louisiana this past last week. Now, after MSM's massive reporting, they realized that the control over policy and resources comes with small responsibility.

posted by dipeshb @ 9:14 AM