I Can't Read This Crap Anymore...

Well, Katrina has certainly brought out the worst in many of us. A couple of weeks ago, I volunteered to be the assistant editor of the Politics section over at Blogcritics. The Politics section long ago ceased to be a place I want to be, but the editor was in the process of a house move, and I hopped in to fill the void. Unfortunately, it means I need to read all the posts in the section, and this week they've been uglier than usual.

In the midst of the destruction of a beautiful and historic city, in the midst of thousands of Americans going without basic necessities for days and living amongst their own dead and dying, each post has become more vitriolic than the last. To add to the verbal carnage, a long string of commenters came along to call names.

There's plenty of blame to go around. Political leaders on the local, state and federal levels have all failed terribly. What we should all be wondering is how on earth, nearly four years afer 9/11, this could happen. What's really clear to me is the fact that we are woefully unprepared to deal with a catastrophe of this magnitude, whether it be a natural or man-made one. All of the bluster that Bush & Co. have produced about homeland security in the past four years has clearly been lip service - when push came to shove, our leadership has failed us miserably. We have only ourselves to blame - we let them get away with this. We have failed in our duty as citizens to hold our representative government accountable for its actions. New Orleans is the fault of all of us.