On the broadest level, one thing seems clear: if we are not able
to rescue the people who are waiting to be rescued in New Orleans,
and to quell the violence that has broken out, the human cost of
our failure will be exceeded by the psychological damage to all
Americans. If we are unable, for much longer, to protect American
citizens, in an American city, from American assailants, the damage
to our political and social fabric will be incalculable, to say
nothing of the impact abroad.
Over the last few days, Americans have heard the word “refugees”
used to describe their fellow citizens. You can tally gas price
spikes, and the resulting effect on travel costs and home heating
expenses. It’s far less precise to calculate the impact on the
American psyche of a Somalia on the Gulf Coast. High gas prices are
one thing; people dying on sidewalks like wild animals is another.
Katrina arrives like the last nail in the American coffin of
post-Cold War optimism, ushering in a new age that seems peculiarly
old — fanatical political murderers, tribal conflicts, acts of
God. It’s amazing what a few cults and some water can do to one’s
smug notions of a value-free New World Order run by knowledge
workers.
The United States has spent a lot of the last century and most
of this new one saving people from far away. Now it’s time to
forget all that, and save some Americans. We will, won’t we, even
though they’re mostly black? We do care more about them than we did
about the people in Aceh, right?
One man at the New Orleans Convention Center wasn’t so sure:
“You can do everything for other countries but you can’t do
nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military
but you can’t get them down here.”
Who can forget, among those who saw it, Bill O’Reilly’s
interview with a 77-year-old New Orleans woman trapped in her house
as the water kept rising? O’Reilly asked her why she had not left
when she could. The woman responded that “I didn’t think that my
mother could make the trip.” You could almost hear O’Reilly’s jaw
sag as he asked how old the woman’s mother was. “Ninety-eight,”
came the reply.
Something tells me that if another Asian tsunami had happened,
Congress would have come back into session already, and President
Bush from Texas before Wednesday. If conditions don’t improve soon,
we will inevitably get racial interpretations for the slow
response. The faces on our television are mostly black, and while I
very much doubt that racial considerations have gone into the
federal response, who can blame these people for thinking so? They
are poor people for the most part, and as the saying goes, the poor
always suffer the most. And they inhabit a blues landscape steeped
in the history and mythology of suffering, white indifference, and
the wrath of natural forces.
In the early 20th century, Delta blues musician Charley Patton
helped create a new music out of the customs and experiences of
agrarian Southern culture. One of his signature songs, “High
Water,” was adapted in 2001 by Bob Dylan, on an album that was
released on September 11th, 2001. Dylan took the Patton melody and
adapted the lyrics, creating a vivid scene of natural apocalypse
that seemed at once to be ancient and as current as yesterday’s
news:
High water risin’, six inches ‘bove my head
Coffins droppin’ in the street
Like balloons made out of lead
Water pourin’ into Vicksburg, don’t know what I’m going to do
“Don’t reach out for me,” she said
“Can’t you see I’m drownin’ too?”
It’s rough out there
High water everywhere
We’re in for some hard times in America. How about some oil
donations from our great pals the Saudis, or the Kuwaitis? Don’t
wait by the phone. America makes out-calls only, as usual.
It’s up to the president now to make sure that the high water
comes down, and that order returns to the Gulf Coast. Nothing, not
even the saving of all of these lives, can be more important than
the restoration of the order that American citizens, rich or poor,
have come to expect as our birthright. Without it, we’re left with
flowing waters and outstretched hands, imagery from a Third World
we have always kept at bay. For all of the very real pathos we are
seeing unfold before us, it is that specter, I think, that is
haunting Americans the most.
