Marble Composition

From The Right

If you're poor, and you didn't have the money to get out of town, The Doughy Pantload has your back:

The “poor and black have been left behind” meme is now in full swing on CNN and MSNBC.

Oh he's not done yet:

CLASS CARDS & DISASTER [Jonah Goldberg]

Several readers complain that it's in fact true that the hurricane will disproportionately affect poor people. I don't really dispute that in the sense most mean it. Yes, the poor will have special hardships. Obviously so. But what I objected to, and still object to, is the reflexive playing of the class card. Is it really true that some middle class retirees who heeded the advice of the government to leave town, only to watch their homes be looted after a lifetime of hardwork for a better life are suffering less than a poor person who lost his rented apartment? What's the metric for measuring this sort of suffering? What about the small businessman who worked his entire life to build something he's proud of? What about the families who lost loved ones, but had the poor taste to make more money than the poverty line?

Whatever happened to the idea that unity in the face of a calamity is an important value? We're all in it together, I guess, except for the poor who are extra-special.

Gee, I wonder what Bill O'Reilly, a.k.a., America's Shitmouth, has to say:

Moral of the story: People were warned to get out. Those who stayed paid a price for that decision. If you rely on the government, you’re likely to be disappointed. No government can protect you or provide for you. You have to do it yourself. If a Category 5 story is headed your way, get out fast.

See folks, this is where the hatespeech from the Right folds inward, and it gets aimed directly at American citizens. After 9/11, their fulminations were cast outward towards any enemy, whether they were real or not; Al-Qaeda and transnational terrorism comprised the former, while Iraq, the French, and Liberals embodied the latter. In hindsight, President Bush was able to successfully morph Osama bin Laden into Saddam Hussein rather easily, and right before everyone's eyes.

Ironically, as New Orleans sinks, many things about America will be unearthed, and as the quotes above show us, it will not be pretty. For many on the Right, being American has nothing to do with a sense of shared national sacrafice, or any thought that we're all in this together. For them, it seems, it's about we have it, and you don't. If you don't have the cash or the clout, and worse yet if you don't fall in line, then you are the enemy, period.

As Big T put it, "The 2000 election was like the Stonewall Riots for the rightwing. They can now go out in public without their hoods, chanting: We're here, we're racist, and we hate you."

posted by FuzzFinger @ 9/03/2005 04:51:00 PM