Whither Katrina

Sadly, and predictably, Katrina-related coverage has largely been cycled out of the media. It's not sexy anymore. Not hott. Sure, our cultural addiction to emotionalism over discourse may lead to human interest stories about Katrina's victims during the holiday season, but serious discussion is SO OVAH. Especially discussion concerning some ugly realities about our society--the unlikelihood of effective state or federal protection of U.S. citizens in the wake of large scale disasters--of either natural or human agency. Already the limits of relying on individual charitable donations over federal aid is blazingly apparent a mere 3 months later, despite the sincere and generous efforts of citizens country-wide. This largest of natural disasters in living memory is the first major reality test, to my recollection, of the theory that private citizens can shoulder the financial burden on a large scale of "taking care of each other," rather than relying on federal aid. One thing that is happening is that donations to other charitable causes have dropped precipitously. More ominous is that the media turned, briefly, to a dissection of its coverage and biases, which while interesting also seems to have had a chilling effect on examining the event itself. While the media engaged in a bit of navel gazing, a crucial opportunity for the U.S. to take a serious look at domestic emergency procedures and what could be improved (ahem) has also been massaged out of the news cycle. Back to Paris!

Genetic Find Stirs Debate on Race-Based Medicine

From this morning's NY Times. Am I crazy, or are the simmering arguments regarding genetics and race weirdly out of touch with the fact of America's mixed racial heritages?

For one thing, those commenting on this issue are collapsing the distinction between the science of genetics with skin color, always a favored tactic among U.S. bigots. Although it is obvious that genetics influence appearance, it is equally the case that skin color is the least stable racial characteristic, so basing any medical approach merely on the color of a patient's (or range of patients) skin color is not particularly revealing. This is particularly true in America, where the melding of races has been occuring for quite a long time--I remember one statistic years ago that both black and white Americans who'd been in the southern US since the 19th Century shared 10% of each other's "race." (This was part of a piece on 60 Minutes about a white woman in Louisiana whose racial designation on her official papers the State changed from "white" to "black" when it was revealed she had a black ancester. Yes, the old "one drop" rule--and this was only in the last 25 or so years!) The preliminary findings of the Genographic Project are also revealing common genetic traits underlying disparate appearances. Yet the fetishization of appearance persists.

I digress.

Social anxiety about the reappearance of eugenics is a valid concern. On the other hand, the potential of genetics-based medicine to save lives should not be suppressed. The rational approach, I think, is running a standardized genetic test as a regular part of taking a patient's medical history would be more helpful. In other words, rely on the test to reveal a patient's genetic makeup, rather than possibly biased visual observations.

Riots in France

It is now the 10th day of rioting by angry "others" in France, having reached Paris last night. Something like 900 cars have been burned, but, despite some injuries, no one has been killed, at least not yet. I was startled to realize, once past my kneejerk reaction against violence, to grasp what the "immigrants" beef is all about--as a someone of mixed race whose family has been in the US since the 1700s I understand the anger that comes from being denied, regardless of one's efforts, recognition as one of the family, so to speak. In reading accounts from the European press, there is an attitude that immigrants and their descendants, even 3 generations on, are not truly French. And they aren't, since, despite their egalitarian ideals, in Europe national identity derives from ethnic origin. In American terms, the immigrants aren't white. "Europe" has been plagued by two problems: lack of space, and nationalism, with sickening results. And this is not France's first brush with denying "frenchness" to ethnic outsiders (I'm thinking of Algeria).

Frankly, it is a strange, uncomfortable feeling to grasp some of what the rioters are complaining about because I want them to be wrong and shut up. But that's not the case--I do kind of get it and am sorry for everyone concerned because people on each side suffer. That is the lesson I've learned from American racism--that both sides seem locked in a sick embrace, becoming more and more mirror images of each other. But I'm hoping and praying that a some way to reconcile, without violence, can be found.

The Long Emergency

James Howard Kunstler. Author of The Long Emergency, given to righteous jeremiads about our cultural addiction to cheap oil. While I don't agree with his bleak view of the future -- I'm more optimistic about human ingenuity -- still I love this guy. The man does a nice of job of cutting through the crap. Here he is, getting right to the point, as usual, re: Iraq, Plame, and so on:

The cry across the land grows increasingly shrill: "THEY LIED TO US!"

For going on three years, the American public, especially on the political left, has been complaining that the Iraq War was some kind of a shuck-and-jive. The Bush government pulled the wool over everybody's eyes. They ran a vicious propaganda operation. We were fooled by all those fairy tales about WMDs, Saddam and Osama, and African radioactive yellowcake.

Now, through the fog of the Valerie Plame affair and the indictment of Scooter Libby, the cry is reaching a crescendo: "THEY LIED TO US!"

Being a Democrat myself, and therefore nominally in opposition to Bush-and-Cheneyism, one has to contend with all sorts of embarrassing nonsense emanating from one's own side. In Sunday's New York Times op-ed section, for instance, Nicholas Kristoff wrote: "Mr. Cheney, we need a stiff dose of truth." I'm sorry to tell you this Nick (and the rest of my homies), but what Jack Nicholson's character said in that court martial movie some years back still applies: you can't stand the truth.

If the American public could stand the truth, we would stop calling it the Iraq War and rename it the War to Save Suburbia. Of all the things that Bush and Cheney have said over the last six years, the one thing the Democratic opposition has not challenged is the statement that "the American way of life is not negotiable." They're just as invested in it as everybody else. The Democrats complain about the dark efforts by Bush and Cheney to cook up a rationale for the war. Guess what? The Democrats desperately need something to oppose besides the truth. If they would shut up about WMDs for five minutes and just take a good look around, they'd know exactly why this war started.

When the American people, Democrat and Republican both, decided to build a drive-in utopia based on incessant easy motoring and massive oil dependency, who lied to them? When tens of millions of Americans bought McHouses thirty-four miles away from their jobs in Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Dallas, who lied to them? When American public officials adopted the madness of single-use zoning and turned the terrain of this land into a tragic crapscape of strip malls on six-lane highways, who lied to them? When American school officials decided to consolidate all the kids in gigantic centralized facilities serviced by fleets of yellow buses that ran an average of 150,000 miles per year per school, who lied to them? When Americans trashed their public transit and railroad system, who lied to them? When Americans let WalMart gut Main Street, who lied to them? When Bill and Hillary Clinton bought a suburban villa in farthest reaches of northern Westchester County, New York, who lied to them?

You want truth, Progressive America? Here's the truth: the War to Save Suburbia entailed an unavoidable strategic military enterprise. Saving Suburbia required that the Middle East be pacified or at least stabilized, because two-thirds of the world's remaining oil is there (and in case you haven't figured this out by now, Suburbia runs on oil, and the oil has to be cheap or we couldn't afford to run it). The three main oil-producing countries in the Middle East, going from west-to-east are Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. We had serious relationship problems with all of them at various times, and they with each other, leading at frequent intervals to a lot of instability in that region, and consequently trouble for us trying to run Suburbia on cheap oil (which they sold us in large quantities).

After nineteen religious maniacs from the Middle East, mostly Arabs (though unaffiliated officially with any state in their actions) flew planes into our skyscrapers and a big government building, we had to kick someone's ass. We decided to start by kicking the ass of Afghanistan, where one particular mischievous maniac, Mr. bin Laden, had set up operations connected with 9/11. It wasn't enough. We never could find Mr. bin Laden, Afghanistan wasn't really in the Middle East, and whatever else they were, the Afghans weren't Arabs. We had to find somebody else's ass to kick to reinforce the idea that religious maniacs unaffiliated with any particular state could not pull off lethal stunts like 9/11 without bringing substantial pain down on their own home places. To put it plainly, we had to kick some Arab ass. We picked Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Not because he had anything to do with 9/11-- which we couldn't pin on any Muslim nation -- but because Saddam's Baathist regime was Arab, and the same general religious brand as the guys who did 9/11, Sunni Muslim, and because Saddam had already proven to be a freelance mischievous maniac quite in his own right over the years, worth getting rid of, and most of all (from a strategic point-of-view) because Iraq was the perfect place geographically to open a US police station in the Middle East. It was right between those two other troublemakers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and setting up an American military presence between them, it was hoped, would moderate and influence their behavior, and discourage them from doing anything to interfere with the indispensable supplies of oil that we desperately required to run our beloved, non-negotiable Suburbia. It was even hoped, by a band of extreme idealists in the US Government, that in the process of setting up a military presence in Iraq, we could convert this troubled, fractious nation into a peaceful, cohesive, beneficent democracy, establishing a shining example, blah, blah. . . . But such is the nature of idealism.

I apologize for taking two long paragraphs to tell you the true origins of the War to Save Suburbia, but it was, after all, only two paragraphs, and the truth is sometimes not so simple. The American people have gotten exactly the war that they bargained for. The outstanding obvious question is not by what wicked and recondite means the War to Save Suburbia got started, but how come once started, we did such a poor job of resolving it, specifically why, after nearly three years, our vaunted technological mastery couldn't get the electricity running more than a few hours a day in Baghdad, why we let squads of redneck moron enlisted personnel beat up on prisoners and videotape their own antics, and why we can't even get the oil equipment in good enough shape so the Iraqis can sell us the oil we still need to run our non-negotiable way of life?

So, as a card-carrying Democrat and as a Progressive who would like to see his country successfully adapt to the changing realities of the world, I propose we stop making ourselves ridiculous by whining about being lied to, because we've only been lying to ourselves. We walked into the War to Save Suburbia with, as the old saying goes, our eyes wide shut.

For more, go to http://www.kunstler.com