Illiterate by 2025 Part Deux

Ok, so after reading that article yesterday, I was so enraged, I was inspired to write the author an angry e-mail (which I kept under 100 words, so he could extrapolate information from it). Now, usually, I don't write angry mail and even less do I write angry mail to someone I don't know, but I was so outraged (enraged AND outraged..that's a lot of rage..) that I couldn't not point out to the guy what a dumbass he was.

So, anyway, I got an e-mail response from him today, that was a form letter to everyone who wrote to him yesterday (over 500 responses apparently). According to him, he was writing the piece as satire. He was writing a doomsday scenario that COULD happen if we continue along the path of least resistance like we're doing now. Apparently, the 2025 byline should have tipped us off. He wanted it to be a satire like "A Modest Proposal" was by Jonathan Swift (which, if you haven't read it, is pretty funny in a sick, dark sort of way. Swift proposes that to stem the population problem among the lower classes in Ireland and as a way to boost the Irish economy, people should begin eating babies. Delicious... http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html read it here if you are so inclined).

Now, I feel kind of stupid for not picking up on that. I had an inkling that it was supposed to be satire, but instead of sitting down and thinking about it for a second, I jumped right into indignant outrage. How stupid of me. Although, I guess I can feel better, because everyone that I talked to about this article yesterday got upset too, and didn't quite catch that it was satire. Or they were pretending not to catch it to make me feel better. I do think he could have made it a bit more obviously satire, but that's just because I'm dense and can't pick up on things like that.

So, let's take a minute and breathe a deep sigh of relief before moving on.....ahhhhh............

And...onwards. Josh and I watched the last three acts of Spike Lee's "When the Levee's Broke" documentary last night. I saw the first one a couple weeks ago, so we just had to finish it up. If you hadn't gathered from the title, this was a documentary about New Orleans post-Katrina. It was beautifully done and left me with a feeling of deep sorrow for the victims.

Now, there are a number of socio-political factors that contriubted to the scale of the disaster. It could be hotly debated who, exactly, was supposed to take responsibility for the victims of Katrina. Was it a federal, state, or local issue? Or was it an individual issue? Is it up to individuals to provide for themselves in times of disaster? Here's what I think, and since this is my blog, and you're here, you have to listen to it:

I think that the local government did take some positive steps in issuing a mandatory evacuation before the storm hit. It gave people with the means to evacuate time to do so, as messy as it was to get out of the town. As far as people who didn't leave, I don't think an effective pre-storm plan was enacted. They provided the SuperDome as a place of last refuge for people who couldn't leave the town, but the people who didn't have a way to get there, were pretty much screwed. There was no plan for what to do with the people if they had to stay at the SuperDome for multiple days. There was no plan for how to deal with the after effects of the storm. All of this, I believe was the local and state governments job to take care of. If you are living in and governing a city and state that is close to or below sea level, and you get hit by hurricanes fairly often, I would think contingency plans would be a pretty high priority.

I think there were some individuals who made the situation worse. There were people who were just plain stubborn and wouldn't leave, which made the rescue process that much longer. There were people who were shooting at one another and looting instead of trying to do what they could to help the rescue effort.

I think the federal government was egregiously tardy in arriving at the site. G.W. didn't even fly over New Orleans until 12 days after the hurricane, much less go into the city to talk to victims. The news organizations had better information about what was happening inside the city than FEMA did. Condoleeza Rice was seen buying shoes and going to shows in New York after the hurricane hit. Michael Brown was a bumbling idiot. Troops were forcing people, at gunpoint, to stay on overpasses rather than walk to a better area. And where was Dick Cheney?? The only video footage I've seen of him in reference to Katrina was talking to a bunch of reporters and having a passerby saying "Go f*ck yourself Mr. Cheney." (which, p.s. is a reference to something Cheney himself said on the Senate floor a couple weeks earlier).

As far as the three levels of government working together, I've seen children solve squabbles better than the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana and the president did. Apparently the governor of Louisiana was upset at the mayor of N'awlins for not backing her in the previous election, even though they were both Democrats, so she was playing political games in that sense. Also, apparently, she was attempting to present some modicum of authority over the situation and had trouble compromising with the president and the mayor.

And now?? The levees that are being rebuilt are just as shoddy as the ones that broke in New Orleans. The Dutch build excellent levees. 60% of their country is below sea level and they have levees that can withstand an event that has something like a 1 in 10,000 chance of happening. Levees are earthen structures. Levees are supposed to have 4 feet of width for every 1 foot of height. The "levees" in New Orleans are walls built with I beams that are pounded into the ground. They're, maybe, a foot wide. According to officials that Spike Lee interviewed, it is not safe for people to move back to New Orleans. Especially in the 9th ward, where most of the damage was done last year.

The insurance companies are being sued for their absolute lack of ethics regarding the policies that people took out to protect themselves from hurricane damage. There was one family who had been paying All State their premiums on time, for 50 years, and their house was completely demolished. All State initially said that they'd pay for everything that was damaged above the water line, since below the water line was apparently flood damage, which that family wasn't covered for. Then they came back and said that the damage above the water line was caused by the flood too, so they wouldn't cover that. Then they said that a shed that this family had in their back yard, which was demolished after a tree fell on top of it, was fixable, and so they would only pay for 25% of the damage. So, this family that was completely devestated by the hurricane, got a check in the mail from the insurance company for about $400. Yeah. They sure were in good hands with All State. A pretty pithy consolation if you ask me.

And now, still, a year later, people are waiting for trailers to live in while they rebuild their lives. Trailers that are sitting around, unused in lots, while these people live in tents or hotels. New Orleans still isn't cleaned up. We haven't heard anything about the massive rebuilding operation that supposedly was going to happen after the hurricane. People are still scattered to the 4 winds. Families torn apart. But yet, we still have the money to send more soldiers to Iraq to spread democracy there. I see where our priorities as a nation lie. It makes me sick.

In general, I'm becoming more and more sick at the state of affairs in our government and our society. That article about youths not reading wasn't too far off the mark. I often find myself looking around my college campus and thinking "no one here cares about anything beyond their own little bubble." The number of people who have never read anything that they weren't required to read is astounding. The number of people who don't understand references to Voltaire, or Dante, or Marlowe (to just name a few...) is depressing. And the thing is, it's not like these works are becoming less accessible! If anything they're far more accessible now than they ever have been before. I mean, before the internet, if you wanted to read "A Modest Proposal," you'd have to go to the library and look it up and check it out. Now, all I did was google "A Modest Proposal," and the first link that was on the list was a direct link to the text. But no one knows this stuff! And you know why? Because knowing the content of "A Modest Proposal" or "Lysistrata" or "Candide" isn't a directly marketable skill. If you know science, or math, or grammar and syntax, all of these things can correlate directly to a number of jobs. Knowing the reasons why the war of 1812 started is pithy and unimportant in the minds of most people. Knowing who Mephastophilis was is irrelevant. Nevermind that knowing the history of a place and reading works of certain periods of time can provide so much insight into our own place and time. Nevermind that learning how to understand texts is such a valuable skill because once you know how to read and interpret, you can learn ANYTHING you want. But no one cares. We just want to sit around and watch our stupid game shows and pretend that a world outside of our living room doesn't exist.

I'm going to get off my soapbox for now, but I can't guarentee another rant shortly. There seems to be a lot going on right now to rant about.