I'll hate you for whatever reason I please
Earlier this week (or last week depending on how your mental calendar works) when Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S.'s Gulf Coast, I thought to myself: "What a great opporunity for Dubya to boost his approval rating!" After all, the man's incapable of leading, but he looks really good in a crisis, and surely one of his advisors would have pointed out this chance for him to reinvigorate his floundering approval rating.
Only, I guess his advisors are as stupid and short-sighted as he is, so instead the governmental ineptitude continued and now a bunch of people are dead. Which is bound to make people angry and start looking for reasons and somewhere to lay blame.
I'm finding it hard to stomach the claims of racism though. It seems to me that any time there is any opportunity for somebody like Al Sharpton to claim racism, he will do so quick and loudly with little real evidence. The lack of help didn't stem from the colour of thier skin but from the thinness of thier pocketbooks. After all, why bother rescuing someone who's never going to donate anything to your political party? Why help the economic group that's least likely to vote for you? Rich black people would have been lifted out in Air Force One for Dubya is blind your ethinicity so long as he can see your money. There isn't that much space inside his shrivelled, alchohol-pickled brain to accomodate complicated biases based on inherited genetic characteristics, hatred of the poor is simple and uncomplicated and doesn't confuse him.
But nobody can say it. Because that sort of hatred is still tacitly okay in America. There's still a notion that poor people have it coming anyway for being lazy. And if they'd just stop wasting thier money on unnecessary things and work hard every single day and go to mass on Sunday and be honest upright cititzens then they, too, can rise through the ranks of society. Like some fucking Horatio Alger story. Only America doesn't work like that anymore.
Tagnorati: aftermath, horatioalger, katrina, racism
Only, I guess his advisors are as stupid and short-sighted as he is, so instead the governmental ineptitude continued and now a bunch of people are dead. Which is bound to make people angry and start looking for reasons and somewhere to lay blame.
I'm finding it hard to stomach the claims of racism though. It seems to me that any time there is any opportunity for somebody like Al Sharpton to claim racism, he will do so quick and loudly with little real evidence. The lack of help didn't stem from the colour of thier skin but from the thinness of thier pocketbooks. After all, why bother rescuing someone who's never going to donate anything to your political party? Why help the economic group that's least likely to vote for you? Rich black people would have been lifted out in Air Force One for Dubya is blind your ethinicity so long as he can see your money. There isn't that much space inside his shrivelled, alchohol-pickled brain to accomodate complicated biases based on inherited genetic characteristics, hatred of the poor is simple and uncomplicated and doesn't confuse him.
But nobody can say it. Because that sort of hatred is still tacitly okay in America. There's still a notion that poor people have it coming anyway for being lazy. And if they'd just stop wasting thier money on unnecessary things and work hard every single day and go to mass on Sunday and be honest upright cititzens then they, too, can rise through the ranks of society. Like some fucking Horatio Alger story. Only America doesn't work like that anymore.
Tagnorati: aftermath, horatioalger, katrina, racism
fi - September 4, 09:20
