Breaking the silence

It's been mighty quiet around the blog the past few days. Truth be told, a lot of that has to do with what's been happening post-Katrina. Unlike so many who have been affected (e.g., send good thoughts/vibes/prayers/karma/etc to local expat/blogger Dictator Princess), we have no real connections to that region (unless you count Gretchen's adoration/worship of Brett Favre, her family's frequent vacations along the Gulf Coast during her childhood, or their condo on the Florida Panhandle that was more or less destroyed by Hurricane Ivan last year), but the whole thing has nevertheless been so upsetting on so many levels that it's been hard to get motivated to blog. It is just inconceivable that in this day and age, one of the best-known cities in the wealthiest country in the world can be allowed to descend into chaos and squalor like a scene from Lord of the Flies as the world watches and NOTHING happens. (And who knows what's happening outside of New Orleans...while the pictures from there have obviously dominated the news coverage, a huge swath of that region has been destroyed, and presumably aid to the rest of the region has been as slow in coming as it has to New Orleans.) When I was watching coverage from the States during the first couple of days I was irritated with reporters who were chasing down well-intentioned but clearly overmatched local officials and police officers to find out why more wasn't being done. I mean, with a storm this size, there are limits to what could be done, especially early on. But as the days went by and things actually seemed to be getting worse rather than better, I found myself getting angrier and angrier that such a thing could happen. I've always felt--and maybe this comes from growing up in California, where natural disasters arrive with some regularity--that one of the true strengths of America is its capacity to respond to a crisis. We may do silly things like build cities in flood zones and along earthquake faults, but when the chips are down, we come together and are able to throw massive human and financial resources into recovery. It's hard to say that these days. So this has been one of those weeks where I'm almost ashamed to be an American, and (although my intent was not to get too political) certainly embarrassed to have a president and administration that are either (a) utterly incompetent, clueless and asleep at the switch; (b) willfully slow to react because the folks stuck in New Orleans are probably not major Republican voters and donors; or (c) both. (I'll give the benefit of the doubt and lean toward (a)...it's kind of sad that incompetence is the most generous explanation.) We've been tested, and so far we've failed. Miserably.