Moral Values

by hilzoy

From UPI:

"Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city.

An eyewitness account from two San Francisco paramedics posted on an internet site for Emergency Medical Services specialists says, "Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot."

"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit. "All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said. The bridge in question -- the Crescent City Connection -- is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.

Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river. He added that the small town, which he called "a bedroom community" for the city of New Orleans, would have been overwhelmed by the influx. "There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people.

"If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged." "

***

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

-- Matthew 25

Comments

[Anarch]

I've maintained for years that liberals need to reclaim the language of morality in public discourse, whether it's religious in nature (as above) or secular ("character", "integrity", etc.). Kudos.

[Randy Paul]

Quoted from arguably the book in the New Testament most ignored by evangelicals.

[Phil]

"Bedroom community" = "white neighborhood" (or "gentrified")

Everytime someone says that racism is no longer a problem in America, I'm pointing them here.

[liberal japonicus]

Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river.

Go to this google map to see precisely what this means. Yes, that is the Convention Center on your left.

[Jesurgislac]

It takes times like these to be able to sort Christians out to the left and the right hand: those who take the Sermon on the Mount seriously, and those who... don't.

Elizabeth Marquardt's clearly among those who do.

Barbara Bush's clearly among those who don't.

I never thought much of George W. Bush's self-proclaimed Christianity anyway.

[DaveL]

Can we please get a Senator or two to speak to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department about taking a look at this? Seriously disgraceful stuff.

[xanax]

My, my hilzoy.

We're growing a strange crop of agnostics these days.

[rilkefan]

Instapundit seconds DaveL. No, no link.

[Anarch]

Although I suddenly remembered that Teresa Nielsen Hayden quoted those very verses a few days ago. So kudos for her too!

[DaveL]

Wow, makes me feel special. I try to stay away from Instapundit, but a day or two ago he had a post up linking to a Samidata post on the EMTs' account, then added an update saying that people had raised questions in comments about the accuracy of the story. The "questions" were all at the level of "look, this detail seems off, so it must be all lies!" Kind of reminded me why I stay away from Instapundit.

[Phil]

xanax quotes Inherit The Wind. Be still my heart.

[bob mcmanus]

"There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people."

I doubt that this was true. If it were true, than we do have a horrible situation not substantially improved by allowing passage. How far would the NOLA residents get on foot?

Just read a long discussion of Jared Diamond vs anthropologists over at DeLong's. A Hobbesian, Melian, world. If on Tuesday, you have 5 gallons of water in your Crescent City Mcmansion for yourself, wife, and three kids, do you carry it across the bridge to the convention center? Is it ok to defend that water bottle against intruders into your house? If so, were the people guarding the bridge that much different?

We revert to that state of nature fast. I might submit that those with more to lose like the Crescent City types revert farther faster than those in the Superdome, who would more easily share.

But gov't, lots of it, very big and nasty, is very necessary not only to protect the unfortunate from nature but to protect the fortunate from abandoning their better natures. I blame the Feds at least as much as I blame the Crescent City folk.

This is presuming that the Crescent City folk were in as dire straits as the Convention Center folk. If they had plenty, let them rot in hell.

[CaseyL]

NPR had a timeline story that I only caught part of. A stormwatcher from the NHC and a weather-modeler (I can't remember their names, and I can't find the story on NPR's website) warned officials in NOLA and in FEMA on Friday, when their models first showed what was likely to happen.

According the story, local officials, FEMA, LANG, and 40 disaster agency officials from all over the country were in constant communication with one another from Saturday on. National Guard troops were sent to their staging areas by Saturday. Water and food supplies were requisitioned. Everyone was poised to go into the city as soon as the hurricane passed by. Blanco had already declared a state of emergency for LA, and Bush had already declared one on a Federal level.

This was before the hurricane even made landfall.

At that point, I had to get out of my car, so I didn't hear the rest of the story. Did anyone else listen to it? Can anyone tell me why, since everyone seems to have been alerted, and in position, by Saturday, no one actually showed up until Thursday?

[bob mcmanus]

Oops, missed this.

"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said."

Okay, let them rot in hell.

[DaveL]

I read something a day or two ago indicating that the nearest place the convention center folks could have gotten help was something on the order of five miles, give or take a couple. That's close enought that a lot of people could have walked it.

[xanax]

phil: I expected Gary to jump on it.

My all time favorite is Brady's peevish response to the question of whether or not he thinks sponges think: Brady: "I don't think about things I don't think about!" Drummond: "Do you think about things you DO think about?"

[CaseyL]

DaveL, was that 'nearest place' accessible? Or would people have had to go through flooded streets to get there? If I remember the sequence of events correctly, there was already a checkpoint on the only bridge out of that area, and people trying to escape were being turned back at gunpoint.

[DaveL]

What I was reading was what was intended as a defense of the Gretna police chief by someone who claimed to know the relevant officials personally. It may have been in the Samizdata comment thread that Reynolds linked, but I don't remember for sure. In any case, the claim was that no harm was done because even if people had been allowed across the bridge, they'd have had to walk several miles to get help once they got across. It appeared to me that the walk would have been on the highway through Gretna to an area where the National Guard, etc., was staging from.

In that context, this person claimed, it was perfectly reasonable for Gretna to keep all those undesirables who'd already trashed New Orleans from committing similar mayhem in Gretna. I find that unconvincing for a whole bunch of reasons, one of which is that I'm probably not the only person who would, in those circumstances, be perfectly happy to walk a few miles to get away from the chaos at the convention center.

[bob mcmanus]

"Can anyone tell me why, since everyone seems to have been alerted, and in position, by Saturday, no one actually showed up until Thursday?"

No. I need more complete timelines, and maps.
I do remember the first NG convoy, on Friday, Saturday? was driving through a couple feet of water on the way to the Superdome. With lj's map, I don't know what people would have encountered a couple miles down the road, had they been allowed to walk.

Certainly Brown needed firing. Central command and control is important. Does anyone here believe Brown had the authority to order the Crescent City cops off the bridge, and the authority and resources to back that order with dead cops?

In anarchic situations, like fer instance Iraq, you need lots and lots of troops to avoid violence.

[CaseyL]

I was hoping someone had heard the entire report on NPR. So far, it seems not. I'll check the website again.

[KCinDC]

I think a lot of Americans are so car-dependent that they think anything over a mile is unwalkable. If there's a disaster in DC I'm fully expecting to have to walk many miles, and I certainly hope there aren't people with guns keeping from leaving so that I won't disturb the citizens of Bethesda.

[DaveL]

Here's the comment in question, which was indeed on the Samizdata thread:

Unlike you or most of your posters, I know for a fact what was happening. I live on the Westbank and know personally the Gretna "Sherrif". He is in fact the Gretna Police Chief.

There were two reasons for stopping the crowds from crossing:

1. There was no place to go on the Westbank. The nearest evacuation center was several miles away in Westwego. Few people would have made it that far if they knew where it was.

2. The GPD was aware of the looting and other mayhem going on in the city and they were not about to let the nerdowells into the city to do there what they did in New Orleans.

I'm lucky. My home was not flooded, was not destroyed by wind nor was it looted. We cannot control the first two, but the GPD certainly could control the third, and that they did.

Now, I expect to get a lot of posters condeming me to being callous, but I don't care. All that I own is still in the house. My life is invested in that house. I built it from the ground up and I'll be damned if I will allow a bunch of gangsters and murderers take it away from me.

All you do-gooders out there perhaps should direct your anger to the ones who accually did the looting, murering, raping, sniping at rescuers and the like. For it was because of them the Gretna PD was forced to defend their city and the poor evacuees had to suffer.

And for those who still insist on calling me callous, let me tell you this; yes, I still have my house, I have another job now and am staying with family in Baton Rouge, the suffering of others is not lost on me.

The refugees seen on TV were located just two to three blocks from where I work. Some people living in the hardest hit areas were aquantences of mine and I have no idea as to their whereabouts. Hell, some of those bodies flooting down streets may be people I know.

I plan on returning to NO ASAP as well as many of my colegues to rebuild the city not mater how long it takes. New Orleans is my home and it will remain my home.

So people, please get your facts straight and get the whole story before you post something. Otherwise, your no better than the news buzzards who parachute into a tragedy to get their face time doing rightous indignation and leaving.

Regards,

Kevin

Or, in other words, "we had to keep those damn looting [black people] out to protect our stuff, and I'm sorry that some of them had to die, but it's their fault for having criminals in their midst."

[CaseyL]

Well, drat. I found the story at NPR's website, but the recording is in a format my computer doesn't recognize. There is a written version, but it's more of a digest. The actual story had interviews with everyone, and more detail.

Anyway, the digest just seems to rehash what's already known. FWIW, though, here it is:

Just days before Hurricane Katrina hit, officials from state, local and federal agencies were hearing that this could very likely be the big one -- the one they knew could devastate the city.

They spent the weekend in almost non-stop conference calls -- making sure all the plans for food, water and security were in place. But even before the storm hit, some of the plans started to fall apart.

National Guard troops in other states sat ready, waiting for orders that never came. Instead, they were told to wait for an official plan and a chain of command to be established.

As the extent of Hurricane Katrina's threat to New Orleans became evident, trucks with water and ice were not positioned as planned. And when they were finally told to move, they were sent hundreds of miles away from most of the people in need. Local officials, people who had been part of the original planning, waited days, instead of hours, for help to arrive.

[bob mcmanus]

Look, I am not just being contrarian. It was chaos. But it looks like initial decent planning went awry. Now everybody is blaming Brown, but if there was ever a dude that looks like a gofer, it is Michael Brown. And I am simply not believing he was the dude to tell Chertoff, Rumsfeld, any joint chiefs hanging around, even the President, to get the hell out of his way so he can get things done.

It isn't that Brown wasn't a take-charge guy, it wasn't a take-charge job by this time. People above Brown are more responsible.

[Kelsey]

I don't know if anyone else has read the complete story recounted from the two paramedics, but I have and the whole story was much worse. They said the reason they went to the bridge was because a NO police commander told them buses would be there to evacuate them. They also explain that the police commander only gave them that info to stop a large group of them from camping out in front of his police station. This story is straight out of some zombie survival movie.

[Gary Farber]

"It isn't that Brown wasn't a take-charge guy, it wasn't a take-charge job by this time. People above Brown are more responsible."

This is a place where I utterly agree with you, Bob.

[hilzoy]

"There were two reasons for stopping the crowds from crossing:

1. There was no place to go on the Westbank. The nearest evacuation center was several miles away in Westwego. Few people would have made it that far if they knew where it was."

-- There were places to go on the Westbank. There were many supposed Christians, not to mention other good people, who might have offered refugees food and water, or driven them to hospitals or to the evacuation center.

"2. The GPD was aware of the looting and other mayhem going on in the city and they were not about to let the nerdowells into the city to do there what they did in New Orleans."

-- It would not have been impossible to frisk people who were coming across. It would have been harsh, but vastly better than nothing, to have let only e.g. the mothers of small children and invalids across.

Moreover, I do not imagine that no one living just a short bridge away from so many ne'er-do-wells and ruffians had chosen to exercise his or her second amendment rights, or that the police would have been unwilling to protect those who had not. Except that -- oops! -- they had all been evacuated, so that only threats to property were at issue.

"Now, I expect to get a lot of posters condeming me to being callous, but I don't care. All that I own is still in the house. My life is invested in that house. I built it from the ground up and I'll be damned if I will allow a bunch of gangsters and murderers take it away from me."

-- I think this commenter has condemned himself to being callous without any help from us.

"All you do-gooders out there perhaps should direct your anger to the ones who accually did the looting, murering, raping, sniping at rescuers and the like. For it was because of them the Gretna PD was forced to defend their city and the poor evacuees had to suffer."

-- What makes him think our anger is so unidirectional? And what, exactly, is so risible about doing good?

[CaseyL]

Well, we do know - because it's been reported elsewhere, multiple elsewheres - that WH lawyers spent 3 days talking about chain of command issues.

Here's how it looks to me: there was pre-planning, lots of it, and good pre-planning, by local officials and lower-level federal officials. Local officials knew what their responsibilities were, and thought the feds knew theirs.

I hypothesize that the lower level feds went back to the senior level managers and said, "Here's the plan." And that's where the trouble started. Once the feds had to actually implement their planning, they ran into the WH legal staff roadblock: "We can't do any of that until we know the chain of command."

I imagine the lower-level feds said something along the lines of "What!? There's a declared state of emergency! Everyone's pre-positioned, and the hurricane's on its way!"

At which point, the senior managers and WH lawyers did what we did on this blog a couple of days ago: argued over whether a state of emergency really meant a state of emergency, whether it meant the feds were in charge of "coordination" or "relief efforts," who would be billed for it, who would command the troops, etc. All that fine detail minutiae that's so appropriate during emergencies, right?

And no one - not Chertoff, not Brown, and not any senior member of the Bush Administration (none of whom were even in town, and none of whom scrambled to get back into town) - exercised what is commonly known as "leadership."

I know commentators here and elsewhere have worked really, really hard to lay it all on the local authorities. I know the Bush Administration is working extra special hard to shift blame to the local authorities.

But it looks to me like the locals did what the original plan called on them to do... did all they could do with the resources they had... and trusted the Feds to do what the original plan called on them to do.

I'm not sure how Nagin or Blanco could have known there would be a total breakdown of authority and leadership in the WH.

Oh, and where was AG Gonzales during all this? You'd think they'd ask the AG to give his legal opinion on the matter. And you'd think that an AG who can "interpret" the law to give a President unlimited powers to imprison and torture people during wartime could "interpret" the law to give a President powers to save people during a federally-declared state of emergency. Wouldn't you?

[hilzoy]

And yes, I completely agree with Bob M. There is no way Michael Brown should have gotten any job with the government, except possibly as a toll collector or something. There is absolutely no way he should have been made director of FEMA. And no one who actually cared about disaster relief would have appointed him to that job.

[Gary Farber]

"They said the reason they went to the bridge was because a NO police commander told them buses would be there to evacuate them. They also explain that the police commander only gave them that info to stop a large group of them from camping out in front of his police station. This story is straight out of some zombie survival movie."

I remember quite well, really. My memory has been known to stretch over whole days, if not so wonderfully beyond that.

Your first sentence is a fact. Your second sentence is an interpretation/hypothesis.

It's possible that the guy deliberately lied, in which case, consequences are due. Other possibilities remain, unless you have more info than mentioned here, such as that he was himself misinformed.

Mind, what I've read inclines me to the "he lied" theory. But it's not yet a fact.

The whole thing is, of course, out of all sorts of apocalyptic scenarios, though I mostly think of the print ones of the Thirties and later before I think of the stuff that came yet later.

[ral]

So, Gary, did you ever expect to see enacted in real life some of those apocalyptic scenarios we read in sci-fi stories? I didn't. Guess I was naive.

[hilzoy]

Bearing in mind that people were prevented by police from leaving NO, watch this unbelievable performance by Mark Williams, about how the fact that people stayed at the Convention Center was because Democrats had turned them into 'a race' of passive, dependent people who expect the government to do anything. He actually says that this is Democrats, who fought a war to keep blacks enslaved and filibustered the civil rights act for a century, finishing the job.

Unbelievable.

And, side issue: does anyone know why, on these 'two people debate one another' segments, they don't have the ability to turn off someone's mike when he doesn't let the other person get a word in edgewise?

[ral]

hilzoy, the out patients are out in force. [Tom Lehrer]

The other quote it reminds me of is from I Caludius: "let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out." Yup.

[hilzoy]

That last from Atrios, who seems to be on some sort of 'find unbelievably hateful people' roll. He also has this, from Glenn Beck, a nationally syndicated talk show host:

"When you are rioting for these tickets, or these ATM cards, the second thing that came to mind was -- and this is horrible to say, and I wonder if I'm alone in this -- you know it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families? Took me about a year. And I had such compassion for them, and I really wanted to help them, and I was behind, you know, "Let's give them money, let's get this started." All of this stuff. And I really didn't -- of the 3,000 victims' families, I don't hate all of them. Probably about 10 of them. And when I see a 9-11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, "Oh shut up!" I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining. And we did our best for them. And, again, it's only about 10.

But the second thought I had when I saw these people and they had to shut down the Astrodome and lock it down, I thought: I didn't think I could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims. "

Who are these people?

[ral]

What surprised me (not any more, but at first) is that people can make a living by saying stuff like this for broadcast.

[Gary Farber]

"So, Gary, did you ever expect to see enacted in real life some of those apocalyptic scenarios we read in sci-fi stories?"

Trust me, that's not the question you want to ask me.

[KCinDC]

I'm surprised that neither Mark Williams nor Michael Graham has yet made this report. It seems like the US should at least get its own section, as the UK does, considering that all the "North America and the Caribbean" incidents are from the US.

[John Thullen]

"Can we please get a Senator or two to speak to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department about taking a look at this?"

We could. Let me guess though, without Googling. Budget cuts several times over the past years? Downsized? Remaining staff shunted off to vague homeland security duties (turning black people and refugee whites, too, back at bridges at gunpoint is a sort of homeland security). Career civil servants (now renamed liberal, regulation-loving do-gooders) taking early retirement, maybe several fired for various disloyalties; some smug, unqualified NRC Haley Barbour types peppered throughout keeping close watch, or probably Clarence Thomas/Janice Rogers Brown types who can make noose signs with their hands with impunity and believe a few nights in the SuperDome trying to find a place to poop is a character-building moral exercise because political correctness prevents liberals from kicking their asses.

Let's think, too, about the fact that paganism has one less place to display itself, given that Mardi Gras is now displaced. There's an upside for the uptight and outasight.

Gee, I hope I'm wrong. For cites, some of us can go look in the mirror; others look out the window and sniff the future in the air.

Is that permanent mildew?

P.S. As to "Who are these people?", Hilzoy, they are the people who believe humans are either incentivized or disincentized in a merely monetary way, particularly if its government money or action. I say this humorously, bouncing off Slart's observation that some Floridians received burial expenses from FEMA even though they died of non-hurricane causes, but I expect that some Floridians, not being able to turn down a great deal at taxpayer's expense, you know, incentivization being the basic law of the universe, actually did a back-of-the-envelope calculation and DECIDED to die right then because they could now afford the bigger tombstone. Their families went for it, too.

It's the Larry Kudlow, Milton Friedman, James Glassman, Thomas Sowell view of human nature. It's like those folks who rush to the hospital every chance they get to undergo some larkish, painful surgery because they finally qualified for health insurance.

My father-in-law induced his own 10-year bout with Alzheimer's just because the bedpan was government-issue.

[felixrayman]

I've maintained for years that liberals need to reclaim the language of morality in public discourse

The problem is that some people falsely think they ever lost claim to it.

[Catsy]

Anytime I hear someone reference the shameful historical record on racism of the Democratic Party as a slur against the present-day Democratic Party, I know that I can safely tune them out, as they have demostrated they haven't the foggiest idea what they're talking about, nor any idea where the majority of that era's racist Democrats actually ended up.

[liberal japonicus]

There are a lot of questions about all this. While I am not too surprised that something like this happened (the social and race stratification in NO is one reason why corruption has been able to flourish there) there was a CNN interview with the cop who is housing a bunch of police officers in house (the article, in various forms, is somewhere on Gary's site, but I can't find it) who said he worked at the Superdome and wanted to counter the 'lawless masses' meme. They were based in Algiers, which is on the Westbank here, so those guys would have had to acquiesce in the Gretna police keeping people out.

On the other hand, the social and race stratification of NOLA makes this whole situation unsurprising (one reason why there is so much corruption in the city is precisely because the stratification can create a situation where corruption is viewed as looking out for one's own)

If it is true, the one intrusion of karma is that the Gretna police, by doing this, have created such a bad image of NOLA that those properties that they were going to protect are going to be worth pennies on the dollar. At least that is what I tell myself to quell the nausea in my stomach.

On another subject, this on DKos from a former IEM employee about the Louisiana Hurricane Plan.

[abb1]

I don't think this is only a moral issue, there's a clear criminal conduct here, sounds like violation of civil rights. One can refuse to let a stranger into his/her private residence, that's for sure; but to block a public bridge - it has to be illegal.

[Slartibartfast]

I never thought much of George W. Bush's self-proclaimed Christianity anyway.

I don't think too much of anyone's self-proclaimed Christianity. The Bible has much to say about not flaunting your faith to earn brownie points, but this is, I think, the best:

8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Shorter: your faith itself comes from God; it has nothing to do with you. Don't brag about it. There's another passage to the effect of let him who boasts, boast in the Lord which amounts to the same sort of thing. To me, though, boasting in the Lord is so close to displaying one's faith for public approval that I tend to shy away from it, and shy away from those who indulge in it. Given that it's become part of politics on both sides of the aisle, though, I don't think either side can exactly claim the high ground here. Higher, perhaps, but not high.

[Tim]

You should mention the sentence in the full account that demonstrates the actual intent of the Gretna officer. The fact that after he drove the crowd back with his gun, he stole their food and water. Sure, I'm sure this was all about the Gretna property values.

[Phil]

Re: hilzoy's "Who are those guys?" They're the aiders and abetters of the far-right takeover of the GOP; this situation has been the far-right's wet dream, confirming as it has for them that government is useless, Democrats are perfidious, and black people are dumb savages. Expect to see things portrayed exactly that way in 2006 GOP election literature, although heavily coded.

And, of course, That Liberal Media helps them out by publishing colorful profiles of them in Sunday newspaper supplements and weekly newsmagazines, showing them as Oh, So Controversial! Isn't It Yummy?!

[Gary Farber]

... (the article, in various forms, is somewhere on Gary's site, but I can't find it) ...."

Benelli.

[xanax]

bob mcmanus: "if there was ever a dude that looks like a gofer, it is Michael Brown."

Reminds me of a line from the Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem "Tentative Description of a Testimonial Dinner to Impeach President Eisenhower" (or something like that)...

"The end is near but golf goes on."

OOOOPS! You said "gofer." I read "golfer." Damn cataracts!
Still applies...

[bob mcmanus]

Ian Welsh

I guess this could also go into the "Did Bush know" thread. An awful lot of talk around the left side of the blogosphere about the destruction of NOLA as urban renewal. Kinda speaks to motive.

Kinda up to the righties, and the proof will be in what actually happens. If the poor and middle class of New Orleans get shut out and bought out of the New New Orleans I and most of my vicious ilk will assume that the Bush administration deliberately held back the necessary food and water, maximising the profit from a fortuitous opportunity.

[lily]

I, too, arrived at my garage just as the NPR timeline story reached the critical momment, so I sat in my car and listened there. The way I remember it is that the state and local governments were indeed poised and as prepared as possible but the hurricane took out some critical elements of infrastructure that left local authorities complelety unable to function. for example in NO cell phones and landlines were out. The NG didn't provide the mobile generators called for by state emergency plans because they got sent to Iraq. Therefore communication was limited for awhile to battery operated radios and stopped altogether when the batteries wore out. That's way the police wwere so disorganized. Another state and local problem was the lack of troops. I think the governor dropped the ball over some kind of chain of command issue in regard to the NG, which NPR described but I took that moment to enter my house and missed the explanation. The rest of the NPR story was about FEMA's failure to take action while state and local governments did their best and pleaded for help. People couldn't get to the supplies organized prior to the hurricane because they didn't have transportation and FEMA didn't provide it promptly, for example.

[Anarch]

The problem is that some people falsely think they ever lost claim to it.

Also true, and largely the point I was trying to make.

[liberal japonicus]

slightly related to this is this WaPo article. My mom mentioned it when I called her, but I didn't realize it was all along the gulf coast.

National Guard crews are setting up double rows of coiled razor wire in front of the tracks and will continue to do so until the fencing blocks the ravaged coast for 30 miles.

The razor wire will block the beach fronts in Long Beach, Pass Christian, Gulfport and Biloxi, which are devastated not only south of the tracks, but also well north of them.

In a region that already looks and feels like a war zone, the coiled razor wire is not proving popular. Residents have said that it makes the already-defeated coastal neighborhoods look like concentration camps. Local officials have grumbled privately that the razor wire is going up against their better judgment.

I suggest paying close attention to what seems like a split between Barbour and Lott, with Barbour insisting that everything is going well and Lott expressing some anger about slow response. My feeling is that Lott is the more nimble politician (despite his Thurmond gaffe) and better attuned to the pulse, especially on the Coast (though he was born in Grenada, he was raised on the coast) while Barbour is a product of the Mississippi Delta (born and raised in Yazoo City)
This cnn article suggests some other problems on the MS Gulf Coast.

[bob mcmanus]

Digby

I think Digby nails the whole story. Flat out has it down.

[James E. Powell]

Love the Matthew 25 quote. All last year I was recommending that Democrats include it in their speeches and refer to it every time some pundit brought up moral values. Oh, well, guess it didn't test well in their focus groups. Guess I don't know anything.

[rilkefan]

Sweet mother of mercy.

[rilkefan]

Outrage, perverted Shakespeare, the usual thing I indulge in.

[Grumpy Physicist]

And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Ah, so now we discover GWB's unhealthy attraction to goats. What does he do in a crisis? My Pet Goat.

[Linkmeister]

Here's the NPR page with links to both the Katrina timeline stories (audio and description)

[Ken]

"But it looks to me like the locals did what the original plan called on them to do... did all they could do with the resources they had... and trusted the Feds to do what the original plan called on them to do."

You're kidding, right?

The original plan called for them to leave their buses idle in a spot where they'd end up underwater? The original plan called for them to lock out the Red Cross to make sure that people wouldn't get food and thus be tempted to stay in the stagnant water? The original plan called for the Gretna police to block the only exit from the city?

"I'm not sure how Nagin or Blanco could have known there would be a total breakdown of authority and leadership in the WH."

Oh, I guess it's opposite day. The breakdown of authority and leadership was on the local level. It was a local decision to leave the people starving. It was a local decision to leave them trapped in the city. It was a local (non)decision that deprived the people of transportation out of town. It was the local police that ran away and left the people at the mercy of vicious thugs. When the Feds showed up in force (within the timeframe generally promised), people started moving and the situation cleared up damn quick.

[Phil]

Ken, the guy in charge of FEMA admitted on live TV that he didn't know what was going on at the Convention Center, despite the fact that every American could see it live on CNN, FOX and MSNBC. The President didn't know the extent of things until someone made him a DVD. How is this NOT a breakdown of leadership?

[Phil]

Ken, the guy in charge of FEMA admitted on live TV that he didn't know what was going on at the Convention Center, despite the fact that every American could see it live on CNN, FOX and MSNBC. The President didn't know the extent of things until someone made him a DVD. How is this NOT a breakdown of leadership?

[Steve Burton]

"...the guy in charge of FEMA admitted on live TV that he didn't know what was going on at the Convention Center..."

Please see The Daily Howler on this point.

If there's a good refutation out there, I'd be interested in seeing it.

[Steve Burton]

Oh - and on the scriptural issue:

...who do you guys think are the sheep? and who are the goats? and who are the "brethren" on behalf of whom this (probably fictional) character, this "Jesus of Nazareth" is so solicitous?

Sorry, Hilzoy, but I just don't think you *get* this speech at all. It is a terrifying, vengeful, sectarian tirade - and *not* a great big pile of modern liberal mush.

That said, the Gretna P.D. did not comport itself in a very Christian-like manner here.

But since when did Democrats and/or liberals and/or the left adopt the view that public officials should act as if they believed that Christianity was true?

[rilkefan]

"If there's a good refutation out there, I'd be interested in seeing it."

Don't know quite what you're referring to, but Somerby does get lazy or fixated on blame-the-Dems spin on occasion - if it's about the buses people have seen pictures of, I think the simple answer I've seen is that the city used other buses to get the people they could convince to leave their houses to the concentration points.

[rilkefan]

"But since when did Democrats and/or liberals and/or the left adopt the view that public officials should act as if they believed that Christianity was true?"

You need to learn to distinguish between the ethics taught by Jesus or "Jesus" and the magical stuff if you want to understand hilzoy's position here, and that of other non-xian Democrats who think "love thy neighbor etc." is a good place to start.

[Steve Burton]

rilkefan:

(1) No, it's got nothing to do with the buses. I provided a link. It seems to be working. Check it out if you've got a moment.

(2) Once separated from the "magical stuff," the "ethics taught by jesus" lose most of their distinctive content and all of their justificatory force.

We have good reason to believe that "'love thy neighbor etc.' is a good place to start" if and only if some pretty big bits of the "magical stuff" are true. If they're not - well, I won't say that anything is permitted, but I also wouldn't cross the Gretna PD in an emergency and look forward to a meaningful vindication, in this life or any other.

[hilzoy]

Steve: Actually, I don't think that this passage, in particular, is sectarian at all. Rather the opposite. Christ is saying: the ways in which you treat others will be taken to be the way you treat me, whether you had any idea that it would be taken so or not. In this passage, at least, salvation does not depend on any actual beliefs, on taking Christ to be God, etc.; it depends entirely on your being decent and generous to others.

I spent my 13th through 22nd years being seriously Christian. During that time, I used to agree with CS Lewis' description of this as (iirc) 'the frankly terrifying parable of the sheep and the goats'. Now that I'm not religious, this is still one of the passages in the Bible that I would like to live by.

[Jackmormon]

We have good reason to believe that "'love thy neighbor etc.' is a good place to start" if and only if some pretty big bits of the "magical stuff" are true.

Steve, with all respect, I think you're being unfair. As a literary-type-person, I take umbrage at the suggestion that good writing can only have influence on people when magical stuff intervenes. Why devalue the imagination to that degree?

I also disagree with the idea that one must accept all of a writer's belief-system in order to find meaning in any of it. Would there be any point in reading books written before (to be generous) 1940, if we had to reject all thinking reflecting unscientific premisses or telos?

Then you should also think about all those people who have found meaning in these words. These people probably have complex relationships with these words, some "magical," others completely secular; these particular words have been around for almost 2000 years, and they've accrued a massive cultural importance. We're talking about words allegedly spoken in Jerusalem in 32 AD--and mind you, these words show up in Matthew within a series of rather cryptic parables. It's worth remembering that there has been almost two millennia-worth of thinking about these words since. These words are part of our culture's language.

If you want to discount anyone's opinion who finds meaning in the Gospels, you could start with Schiller, Kant, Voltaire, Dostoevsky, Hugo, Dickens, Wordsworth, Lessing, Chateaubriand, Austen, Shelley, Eliot (George), Heidegger, Lyotard, Ricoeur, and Derrida. Then you could take a shot at moving contemporary public opinion in the US.

All that said, looking back into Matthew 25, I don't really understand your point about this lesson's being "a terrifying, vengeful, sectarian tirade"; this chapter seems mostly to concern economics, and seeing as though it also contains the parable of the talents, it sends something of a modulated message (invest your capital, but be charitable). Yeah, Jesus divides people into saved and damned, and he's preferring the poor and those who are charitable to the poor. I don't quite understand the outrage.

(I see now on preview that Hilzoy is quoting Lewis about this parable's being terrifying. I still don't quite get it: Jesus makes very clear what the distinction between the two groups is, and he's urging people to be more charitable.)

[Jackmormon]

Ack, oh please make the double post go away. (Apologies, all: my connection sucks, my laptop's old, and my double posts are ruining this site.)

[hilzoy]

Jackmormon: will do in a moment. The terrifying part, or so it seemed to me at the time, was the thought that all those people who were on the receiving end of all the uncharitable things I had ever done -- those waitresses I snapped at, the teachers I tormented (recall, I was in high school, and I was, to put it mildly, a source of consternation to my school), all of them, might as well have been Christ.

I mean: if you have a lot of confidence in your own generous nature, it's not terrifying. But if you have what would, in a different age, have been called a conviction of sin, it was terrifying. And I always did -- not a morbid "oh I am so appalling!!" one, but what seemed to me to be a fairly realistic estimate of my own character, which was regrettably not all that consoling. Moreover, modest improvements of the sort I might plausibly carry out seemed unlikely to get me to the point where I could contemplate that parable with anything like equanimity.

[dr ngo]

I left my religious phase somewhat earlier than Hilzoy, in (small) part because I couldn't help finding funny things that I wasn't supposed to ("Would you mind crossing your feet? We've only got three nails.")

Which brings me to the story of a traveler who ends up in a small town very much in need of a horse. He happens upon the local preacher, who for a substantial sum sells him one that the entire town knows to be spavined and liable to break down at any moment. After the gullible traveler leaves town on the hopeless horse, one townsman asks the preacher "How could you, a man of God, cheat that man so?" The preacher just quotes Matthew: "He was a stranger, and I took him in."

----------

Meanwhile, when I'm not giggling and snarking, I have to agree with those upthread who see this story as having a moral force independent of the "magic" that is associated with it.

It strikes me as buying into a fundamental fundamentalist error to assume that the only reason people behave morally is because a literal GOD tells (commands, forces, terrorizes?) them to be so. The myth circulates widely in many "Christian" circles: an atheist cannot have any ethics at all. (Implying, at least to me, that without being told by Divine Authority not to, they themselves would just go out and start killing and stealing. And why not?)

The myth is simply untrue. The problem is that we have to make ethics up as we go, rather than have them handed to us as a package. Stories such as this, with or without the "magic," are one way of helping us shape our choices. This story should have an extra "zing" when applied to the actions of those who profess Christianity - as I surmise the good folk of Gretna do - but the moral would be just the same if they were Buddhists or atheists, IMHO.

[Jackmormon]

That makes a great deal of sense, Hilzoy: the imperative and judgment here are indeed absolute. It's wild how such matters get filtered through specific religious practice, though. In my church, people gave generously to church charities but ignored, for the most part, the homeless outside the door. I feel that I've inherited this tradition of feeling responsible for only generalized misery. You're right that the awfulness of Jesus's parable consists in its particularity: each hungry person becomes an "I," and each act of refusing charity becomes an eternal sin. None of us can really live up to this standard, which goes a long why towards explaining why most churches and traditions have tended towards metaphorical and inspirational readings of Jesus's very radical teachings.

[rilkefan]

"None of us can really live up to this standard"

I am unable to imagine a functioning Christian society given my opinion of human beings, and I assume 99.9% of Christians agree, explaining why they don't sell all their goods and give the proceeds to the poor. One has a responsibility to one's children, and aging parents, and neighbors; how does one weigh their claims against people starving in Burundi or wherever?

That's the really sad part about Christianity to me - if it was true, then someday you'd get an explanation about how it was all meant to work out and could have. So much more satisfying than "the initial conditions of the universe were such and here's the equation for particle interactions." We'd all sit around discussing it and saying "That's so cool, why didn't I think of that!" or "Yeah, there was a lot of suffering, but in the end it all worked out ok".

[Steve Burton]

hilzoy, it depends on who all is meant by "these my brethren" in verse 40 and "these" in verse 45. You apparently adopt a rather optimistically inclusive view that I find hard to square with the rest of the text.

So does Jackmormon. Are there no poor goats?

Jackmormon, I agree that good writing can influence people (for better or worse) even in the absence of "magic."

But the ethical message of the gospels is essentially dependent on their otherworldly metaphysic. Take that metaphysic away and I see little to recommend what's left.

To judge by socio-cultural trends in modern, de-Christianizing Europe and America, I'm not the only one.

But it's late now.

[Anarch]

The problem is that we have to make ethics up as we go, rather than have them handed to us as a package.

You have to go into life with the Ethics you have, not the Ethics you want. Or something like that.

[hilzoy]

rilkefan: the answer is simple, I think: sin.

I mean: it's a central part of Christianity that we are all sinful, and truly cannot behave as we should without grace. This always seemed to me perfectly plausible, and I was totally bewildered by people who wanted to cut the gloomy sinful bits out and pretend they didn't exist: as far as I was concerned, they were just accurate, and pretending they didn't exist meant also pretending that confession, absolution, and the attempt to set things right with God -- i.e., the only possible remedy -- didn't exist either.

Steve: these my brethren are, I thought, 'the least of these'. So of course the poor.

dr ngo: the constant evidence of God's somewhat mordant sense of humor that I saw all around me made me conclude that it was OK to find parts of Christianity funny. Hymns were my undoing. There was one really unfortunate episode in which I came in late and had to sit in the very front pew, since there was no other seat, and I was with my sister (younger, converted in my wake), who shares my sense of humor exactly, and the first hymn was the one that I could never keep a straight face for, since it contains the lines:

"By the light of burning martyrs
Jesus' bleeding feet we track..."

And how could anyone keep a straight face during that? And of course my sister and I both dissolved in laughter at the same moment, and ... well, it was just awful.

And some of the odder saints ...

[liberal japonicus]

rilkefan: the answer is simple, I think: sin

That's not the imperative, is it?

[hilzoy]

lj: ;)

[Jesurgislac]

Hilzoy: I used to agree with CS Lewis' description of this as (iirc) 'the frankly terrifying parable of the sheep and the goats'. Now that I'm not religious, this is still one of the passages in the Bible that I would like to live by.

Are you familiar with The Lyke Wake Dirge? I first heard it to music via Jethro Tull, but it's one of those things I can't remember when I first heard it.)

If ever thou gavest meat or drink,
-- Every nighte and alle,
The fire sall never make thee shrink;
-- And Christe receive thy saule.

If meat or drink thou ne'er gav'st nane,
-- Every nighte and alle,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;
-- And Christe receive thy saule.

It's the story of a soul making a crossing after death, protected from the thorns of Whinny-muir by the clothes they gave to the poor, from the Purgatory fire by the food and drink they gave. It shows, I think, how in a society close to the edge the basic of giving help to those who need help is deeply rooted in the psyche.

Steve Burton: Are there no poor goats?

One thing's for sure, Steve: the New Testament is quite consistent, not just in this passage in Matthew, on the evils of being rich and the virtues of being poor. ;-)

But it's clear to me (as Hilzoy says) that the passage refers to those who are most vulnerable, most in need of help, most powerless, most despised. The parable of the Samaritan must be understood in terms of the Samaritan as a vile creature (cite) - someone whom Jesus's followers would have understood to be a goat, a believer in false gods.

A year or so ago a friend - a Buddhist by upbringing - was complaining of her Christian friends at school who kept sending her evangelical messages by e-mail (mass e-mails, which are annoying in any case, but particularly annoying because they just assumed that their audience was Christian, and her friends knew perfectly well that she wasn't, and what was all this about all religions being equally true, because if that was the case, they'd all be saying the same thing and they weren't?

What I told her was that the part that is true is the part that is all the same: love your neighbor as yourself. Be good to others. Be kind to strangers. Don't abuse those weaker than you. It's a core value in virtually any world religion I can think of, and I think (being an atheist) that it's a core human value, something instinctive that we should pay attention to.

[hilzoy]

Jes -- yes, I know the dirge, though I didn't know its name. I found it as part of Britten's Serenade for Horn and Tenor (which, now that I think of it, could well have had something to do with my reading of the parable at the time, since it was one of my favorite pieces of music at the time. And still is.)

It, too, is definitely scary. -- Who knows where I got the very clear sense that 'Christ receive thy soul', like 'may justice be done to you', is not necessarily a nice thing to say, even if one thinks that Christ and/or God is perfectly good and perfectly benevolent, and that if you are a decent person, then encountering Him would be, well, perfect beatitude? I definitely had it from very early on.

[Steve Burton]

hilzoy: to read "the least of *these*" as "the poor," *tout court*, is to read very contentiously indeed. No "of course" about it.

And to identify the poor of 1st century Palestine with the poor of 21st century America is even more contentious.

Jesurgislac: Jesus of Nazareth, as portrayed in the gospels, consistently advises the wealthy to renounce their worldly goods and concerns.

But why? Is it because he takes a deep interest in the material welfare of the poor, or because he sees something especially virtuous in their poverty, as such?

But if poverty, as such, *is* virtuous, why would he want to alleviate it?

Those who seek to read modern secular egalitarianism into the teachings of the gospel are simply missing the boat.

[liberal japonicus]

I found it as part of Britten's Serenade for Horn and Tenor (which, now that I think of it, could well have had something to do with my reading of the parable at the time, since it was one of my favorite pieces of music at the time. And still is.)

The Denis Brain version, I hope.

Guardian review of the various versions

[rilkefan]

I've long liked the Pears/Tuckwell version.

Anyone who likes this stuff should check out the Folk Song Arrangements. This is one of my favorite recordings ever.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

There is an interesting analysis to be had somewhere in the change of Christianity when it was challenged by the Mithras cult of the Roman legions, but I don't have time for it right now. :)

[liberal japonicus]

Yowza, Seb, Mithras really puts Steve Burton's comments in perspective. This article (in various placed on the internets) lays out some basics of the Mithras cult and this link points to linkages in the two.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

The first article is a not-bad summary. About ten years ago I wrote a paper on the cult that hypothesized that much of the miltarism in Christianity was to deal with the threat of the Mithras cult. Many of the linkages should be almost self-evident. I should try to find that somewhere.

The second article isn't as good. This kind of thing is draws the parallels too far and is inaccurate to boot:

Mithras was born out of a rock—Theos ek Petros—and Christian imagery shows the stable, in which Jesus was born, as a cave. (The infant Mithras was adored by shepherds who brought him gifts.) It was not originally oppression that led the early Christians to use catacombs for worship but simply a desire to copy the practice of the worshippers of Mithras. They decorated their catacombs with paintings, one of the most popular ones being of Moses striking the rock. Mithras, struck a rock to produce water for his followers to drink!

Catacombs really were used to avoid opression, and the rock/cave thing is stretching quite a bit. And lots of religions involved sacrifice (even symbolic sacrifice). But even without stretching, the similarities are striking. Despite the similarities, Mithras was a militant warrior cult and I suspect Christianity felt it had to respond in kind (especially as it gained power in Rome.)

Anywho, I'm off to bridge.

[Steve Burton]

Sebastian - is your paper available online? Or by e-mail?

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

It isn't even available to me right now. I'm going to have to try to find a copy of it somewhere. Hmm, I wonder if it is in that storage unit box, or if it is on my old Macintosh SE? Lol if it is on the SE I wonder how I will get it off.

[Steve Burton]

Oh, by the way - in the unlikely event that this thread gets anybody curious about Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings - please do NOT start with either of the Pears recordings. The early one with Brain is in very iffy sound, and the later one with Tuckwell is vocally pretty threadbare. (I mean, let's face it - Pears was a great *artist*, but he never had a great *voice*)

Instead, start with Ian Bostridge on EMI. Georgeous voice, gorgeous sound, sensitive interpretation.

Once you're in love with the piece, move on to Pears.

[Steve Burton]

Sebastian - well, then, I will have to live in suspense.

If and when you come across it, please do send along a copy.

(I hope that I'm not being too presumptuous here.)

[liberal japonicus]

Sorry, Steve, I'm a hornplayer, so anyone who doesn't start with the Brain is making a big mistake imho (in my hornist's opinion) ;^)

[Steve Burton]

But l.j. - if people *start* with Brain, they'll never understand how unique he is.

They'll just think that's what horn-playing is like! - and be disappointed with anything else, even if it's Tuckwell, or Myron Bloom.

[liberal japonicus]

A-ha! Maybe that's why I never was able to break into pro hornplaying. I was always disappointed with my hornplaying when I compared it to Brain...