Remaking America In New Orleans' Image

Mention Hurricane Katrina and the first thoughts evoked in many peoples minds will be how the government failed the people; more specifically, how President Bush failed them. They will not think first of the warnings issued by government at all levels, nor will they recall their own failure to heed those warnings. Why? The answer is simple; they heard the warnings and waited for their instructions from their "leaders". The instructions were clear, however, and they were to get out of the city fast, but most of the inhabitants of New Orleans were so accustomed to being cared for on every level that they sat back and waited for someone, anyone from the government, to come for them.

New Orleans was but a spec on the landscape of the entire nation, and was not anything more than an anomaly at the time. Other Gulf Coast cities dealt with the ravages of Katrina fairly well and have since moved forward, while many of the citizens of New Orleans still languish in the aftermath of the storm, still waiting for help. Still dependent on the government.

Apply this mentality to the nation as a whole, as we are beginning to witness through the financial crises that have befallen us, coupled with the mantra of our new president-elect, and we have the makings of a gigantic New Orleans. Everyone is now demanding a helping hand from the very people who caused this financial storm, unlike the culpability of Katrina which lay largely in the hands of God and, to a much lesser degree, Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco.

Bear in mind that Nagin was re-elected by the people he damaged so, while Blanco has been supplanted. But the people of the U.S. just elected Barack Obama, who has been promoting an agenda bearing a striking resemblance to the atmosphere that created the havoc in New Orleans, that being, that government will take care of everything. Personal responsibility is being vilified as we speak as a cruel outlook on the "misfortunes" of others, while it is all of us who stand to lose in this economic meltdown.

All of us dream of a protective blanket and a world in which we have no cares, but we are all born to fly free, and the constraints of protection and security are alien to us, in the end. Even birds nudge their hatchlings out of the nest. A prison cell is the most secure place in the world, particularly an American cell, where the incarcerated has nothing for which to want; except freedom.

I do not fret over the "red state" areas of the country save for one reason; it is those people who will be forced to deal with the marching zombies exiting the large cities when the experiment of re-engineering America fails. When people realize that they have traded their souls for the comfort of an omnipotent government, only to be sadly disappointed in the end, they may well end up as trophies on a dark-wood panelled den in flyover country.

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