and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

It's sort of hard to come up with something to write about - be it melancholy or proud, exciting or profane - when there are a bunch of people in the gulf states flooded out of their homes and with very little belongings being prominently displayed on the news. I stick that last little bit on the end their, in the news, because that's what's really important here if we want to get down and pick bones about it. If it were not for the CNNs and the Headlines and the Fox News Networks of the USA I would not be aware of the struggles that are going on down in LA and MI. If it were not for the NYTimes, the Times-Picayune, the WSJ, the WP, and others then I would not know that gunmen have roamed the streets of New Orleans, that police have turned in their badges, that people have returned to their homes to find mold and mildew, and that some people paid near on $6 a gallon for a gallon of gasoline. And like a "typical dumb american", if it were not for these outlets, I wouldn't really care too much. What you don't see can't hurt them. Or something like that.

America has a spectacular way of making things sound a whole heck of a lot worse than they are. This, some say, is America's worst disaster in history - yes, I have heard this said. It is horrible, nothing worse could have happened to the people of New Orleans, it is the end of the world as we Mardi Gras'ers know it. Or something like that. The truth of the matter is that New Orleans was situated in a flood plane, under sea level, and even I - as a snot-nosed high school kid ten years ago - wondered how it was possible or more importantly, safe to live like that. I remember being awe-struck at the trivia joke of "how many inches a year does Tulane University's library building sink into the ground?". This was not unexpected.

So sure, there are some people suffering in the wake of this disaster. There are some people and animals who have died. There are some people who have lost their homes, their jobs, their entire lives. There is a President who has lost what little veil of competency he may have had left. These are unfortunate events for those involved but is this really, can I ask, a horrible disaster? You are nodding and saying yes to yourselves I imagine but let me recall something, not even a century ago, not even a score or ten years, but just last year. It was a little tsunami you may have heard of that killed somewhere in the region of 170,000 people. One hundred and seventy thousand people. How quickly we forget.

I think the real tragedy here, the real horrible disaster has nothing to do with a hurricane named katrina and absolutely everything to do with the lackluster sort of response this country has mustered. I think it has everything to do with poor planning and poor execution of safety measures, poor response time from national officials, and overall a poor showing by this nation's government in general. I think this is almost as embarassing as the entire Iraqi fiasco. It calls into question the true nature of our perceived "security" on our own soil.