matt, great post — you are very right. a lot of people spend a lot of time blaming politicians & the top 1% for poverty; but the fact of the matter that there is a scared and apathetic middle class that doesn’t want to lose footing, doesn’t want to be less comfortable. Helping people, changing your world view is VERY uncomfortable. It can also be very alienating. and there’s no immediate return, no immediate gratification like that which comes from acquiring THINGS as we are so encouraged to do in our consumer-ocracy.

okay… i’m probably just rambling now… but, in any case, I agree completely. We need a revolution. I’m just so so scared that everyone’s just going to go back to business as usual once the news coverage slows down, fall sweeps comes through, and the car dealers start having their end-of-year blowout sales.

Good one, Matt. The Holmes quote is a great find.

Matt — I hear such an echo here of my own rage and despair, my own worries about what didn’t I do and what more could I have done, and my own readiness for true, deep change, for a revolution. Yet as I’ve wrestled with these feelings, I’ve had to reach some disturbing conclusions. First of all, to be an American has always been to have blood on our collective hands. We attacked and destroyed the sovereign nation of Hawaii to annex it for our sugar kings; we used gunboats to force the creation of the “independent” nation of Panama so a canal could be dug through it; we BEGAN our country by slaughtering the nations who already lived here whenever they were seen as an inconvenience. But…if abolitionists had withdrawn from “our corrupt and morally bankrupt society, ” had refused to participate, then it is quite likely now that the tragic headlines would be focusing on the loss of “property” to slave owners rather than on the loss of life to citizens. If all of us had withdrawn from the corruption of our country after the election in November and gone elsewhere, would anyone in New Orleans be better off today?

There is a trap to rage, to grief, to guilt to despair — the trap of accepting the value of our feelings as greater than the value of our mundane actions: voting, finding truth, and making it available to others, working for economic justice, nagging our congressional delegations. And although all those feelings would like to say (as your original version of this post did) that what I’ve done had little or no value, I have to fight the “what’s the point” fallacy that is so often a part of grief. It DOES help, and there IS a point to finding and telling and spreading the truth. It DOES help and there IS a point to educating voters, registering voters, being voters. It DOES help, and there IS a point to exposing injustice, greed, and criminal behavior.

American society is hijacked over and over again by manipulative, greedy, criminally indifferent, monied interests precisely because most of us want to believe that the rest of us are, or are trying to be, good. And we continue to believe this because we often see evidence of good. The Clinton years were not heaven come to earth, but they saw a real reduction in poverty among black people, an increased commitment to environmental protection, a genuine recognition that government owes obligations to the people it serves. What I have had to learn, and I think all the rest of us are learning, is that we can never stop working for a better country. We assumed that everyone would see the value of protecting fragile wetlands, of creating better jobs, of increasing citizen participation - -and we were wrong. The 1% at the top doesn’t value these things. They use their wealth and power to convince the middle class of three basic fallacies: 1) There is not enough to go around; 2)If a program benefits someone else, it is, therefore, hurting you; 3)It doesn’t matter who you vote for, the basics problems of YOUR life are outside the realm of government. When Aut characterizes the middle class as “apathetic and afraid,” have some sympathy — they’ve been conditioned to feel that way by people who invested an immense amount of money and power to do so, ably assisted by MSM flunkies who have abdicated their responsibilities.

There is no harder fight than the fight against money, power and privilege. It takes time, constant effort and an ability to welcome small gains because they are always important even if they are never enough. We have seen evidence of this hard work and dedication in the blogs — like THIS ONE, Matt — that make it possible for us to have access to real information, serious questions, disturbing thoughts, and links to others with whom we can work. Our work has had value, and it is gaining traction, but we are grief-stricken because we have not been able to make enough change fast enough to save the thousands of lives lost — and the million lives disrupted beyond belief and perhaps, beyond repair.

But I am NOT part of the problem, even though I live with and in the shadow of it, and I AM part of the solution, even when I cannot have the gratification of seeing the fruits of my work. And I am going to use my rage, my grief, and my disgust to help fuel all those mundane actions that are slowly gathering weight and mass. I don’t know which blogger, which social action group, which letter to a congressperson, which blog link forwarded to a friend, which contribution of time or money or thought will be the tipping point. It most probably won’t be one of mine that changes the balance. But without mine, and yours, and everyone else’s, it won’t happen at all.

So apologies, Matt, for posting a sermon instead of a response. And thanks, not just for what you’re doing, but for what you’re making it possible for others to do. And a plea: please remember what you’re doing is important, even when you can’t see the immediate result.

We need a revolution.

Matt, sign me up. I’m there.

You certainly are creating the venue for a revolt - keep ‘em coming , for while pictures may lie the tattered coat is effulgent with truths. That image (while gruesome) is a brutal reminder that there is no more room in hell … for in the USA the dead must populate the streets to remind us all of our sins against humanity.

May they rest in peace, and the living call for action!

If only there was a single reason to believe that America or the human race for that matter is capable of this profound change.There would be hope for us to one day live better. But I fear that our history on earth shows absolutely no hope of any real breakthroughs, at least not on a time scale I can comprehend. We have had revolutions in the past, but it seems that slow incremental change is all that humans are capable of. We just don’t do paradigm shifts overnight. I’m not making any sense at all so I’ll shut up now. I hope you can sense the uselessness I feel and I tried to express but I can no longer think straight. I don’t really want to give up on myself and all of human kind.I don’t know what the fuck to do

[…] Tattered Coat encourages others not to turn their faces from the dead, which the government has tried from the beginning to have us do, and continues to do so, exhorting that their focus is on the living, first in search and recovery and then in caring for the living. Though very little care for the living was taken during the evacuations. The White House also says our eyes should be on the future rather than playing a “blame game” focusing on the past and says it is moving forward with help, with assistance, and with an investigation led personally by the president into what went right and what went wrong, and if you’re not for them then you’re against them. That’s what they’re saying when they say you can either step up to their plate and eat what they feed you, or be contentious in your big-little corner of America, because their plan is to walk on by and pay you no mind. Big-little because the polls are saying it’s the majority who believe now things are bad wrong with the president and his response to this crisis. […]

This is a great post. You are so right. Thanks for sharing those pictures. As gruesome as they are, they need to be seen. People need to understand the real tragedy here. As usual the administration wants to deflect responsibility and spin the suffering of others to their own advantage. No surprise.

I agree that there is an apathetic middle class that needs to wake up and do something. I just showed these pictures to a co-worker who said she is tired of hearing about Katrina, and hearing about the finger pointing, and seeing it on the news every night while she is trying to enjoy her popcorn. *sigh* She said those who died because they did not evacuate stayed at their own peril. I pointed out that thousands of them did not have the means to leave, and thousands went to the emergency shelters which were not stocked well enough to provide food or water, nor were those people evacuated when they got there. She said, if she suddenly had to evacuate Toronto she wouldn’t’ have anywhere to go either. I said, “You have a car & a credit card. You could go if you really had to. What does one do when they have no vehicle, no credit, they live cheque to cheque and they have $10 on them when they are told to evacuate? Should the government just abandon them because they are poor?” She didn’t get it. I felt like I was talking to a brick wall. *sigh*

Unfortunately there will not be any type of massive change in North America until things get much worse. And by then, will it be too late?

I think you have a great site here and I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve just linked to you on my little tiny blog (that pales in comparison).

Peace,
Cat

[…] This is the soundtrack to the revolution. […]

Yes, we need a revolution. Now.

[…] In a previous post, On Looking at Photographs of the New Orleans Dead, I wrote that “only when we are willing to look at what our nation has wrought can it be saved, if it still can be saved.” […]

[…] Just as I thought that it was important for Americans to look at photographs of the New Orleans dead, I think it is imperative that our nation take a sober look at this material, no matter how disturbing it is. After all, it was done in our name. […]

The Army Could have stopped the New Orleans Flood on Day One

All Bush had to do was send Heavy Lift Helicopters to New Orleans on Day One of the Hurricane. They could have plugged the Levee Breach with Cargo Containers before the waters flooded New Orleans.

New Orleans has Thousands of Cargo Containers that could have been arilifted and dropped to plug up the Levee Holes in a matter of Hours.

What Bush Did, His Administration and the Republican Party Leaders are Grounds for Impeachment for Criminal Neglect for not immediately sending the helicopters.

Howard Scott Pearlman

Pearlman For Congress