1115.org

Bush’s latest Gulf Coast trip was his 13th trip to the region since Katrina struck.

In many countries, the established political convention is that some window-dressing type improvements would have been made in badly affected areas, just so that the leader of the country could point to them, and truthfully claim that progress was slowly and steadily being made.

Even if New Orleans had attracted this minimal, this most cynically exploitative political attention, the Lower 9th Ward and Lakeview wouldn’t be in anywhere near the shape they still are.

That’s how badly the system has failed the victims of Katrina.

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, comparisons to third world countries became a media cliché. But the sad fact is that in terms of recovery and reconstruction, we haven’t even managed to live up to third world standards.

Katrina is still our national shame. Perhaps even more than it was a year ago. Because the inexplicable truth is that even that first wave of shame didn’t impel the authorities to effective action.

Somehow, what I’m reminded of is the scene from Gandhi, where a fanatic Hindu tells the hunger-strike weakened Gandhi how he killed a Muslim child by dashing out his brains, and says “I’m going to hell!” Gandhi, with that almost inconceivable practical saintliness, smiles and says: “I know a way out of hell. Find an orphaned Muslim child. And raise him as your own. Only raise him as a Muslim.” (Just paraphrasing from memory, not an exact quote.)

There is always a way out of hell. Redemption is always possible, even for the most glaring or most heinous acts of omission or commission.

There is no doubt that there was incredible ineptitude on the part of the authorities, which needlessly magnified the destruction that Katrina wrought, and increased the death toll and the misery it caused. The way for authorities to atone would have been to preside over a proactive and forceful recovery and reconstruction program, to take the shattered lives of Katrina’s victims and work tirelessly till they were able to hand back some semblance of a normal life to most of the victims, if not all.

That was the way out of hell. And they chose not to take it.

And then, of course, politicians being politicians, they spent the last year bragging about everything that has been “done”, how they have lived up to all the promises.

I find that truly more sickening than anything else that has happened in the last year.