Allegorys R' Us.

From the A.P.:

"The evacuation of Superdome refugees was interrupted briefly when school buses rolled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt hotel.

They were move to the head of the line to be evacuated -- much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the stinking Superdome for days.

The 700 had been trapped in the Hyatt just like the others, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome."


There she is a nutshell, folks, the fundamental, but almost entirely invisible (to the majority) impact that race and class have on Americans. Ten thousand impoverished black people, having spent the past five days in a literal hell, covered in filth, subject to violence, standing in the sun, in lines, for DAYS, are made to wait so that 700 presumable well-off, presumably white tourists and staff from a luxury hotel can be evacuated in front of them. And the shit of it is: for those people doing to evacuating, and the Hyatt evacuees, there is probably NO REALIZATION THAT ANY OF IT IS FUCKED UP.

And then, of course, there's this, from the Head Impossibly-Priviledged-Asshole-With-No-Consciousness-of-his-Priviledge, George Bush, in Mississippi:

"We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we're going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch. (Laughter.)"

What the fuck goes through a person's mind when they say something like that? Tens of thousands of black people are dying a hundred miles to his west and he's talking about the destroyed house of a Senatorial dickwad who HARKENS BACK FONDLY FOR SEGREGATION?

This shit is so utterly egregious that even a hardened cynic and misanthrope like me can't believe that it can go ignored. The bedrock racism and classism that has already condemned millions of Americans to second class citizenship and which has now MURDERED perhaps tens of thousands more, will have to be dealt with if there is even a shred of remaining collective decency left in this country: In the absense of a terrorist enemy to hate, our anger MUST finally turn to those who warrant it; the oblivious white upper class who let this happen, and don't see to have even registered the magnitude of their crimes, who see no crimes at all, but merely THE WAY THINGS ARE.