Blame the Victim

Today on Meet the Press, Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, appeared composed as he simply and coherently outlined where the federal government had failed the people of Louisiana over the last week. But when Tim Russert asked the following question, President Broussard broke down, dissolving into tears of despair as he told one of the most heart wrenching stories I've heard this week.

The question Russert asked was, "Shouldn’t the Mayor and Governor of New Orleans bear some responsibility for the relief efforts?," a position that the Bush administration is actively promoting. President Broussard’s response, gut-wrenchingly honest, should lay the question to rest. He enumerated and defended all the ways that everyone he knew on a local level had given all they had for the last week, and closed by saying that the mother of one of the emergency relief staffers in his building had been trapped in a nursing home. Every day, she would call and ask when help would be coming. And everyday, her son would tell her, “Momma, they’re comin’ today.” And they told her that on Tuesday, and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. And Friday night she drowned, President Broussard said, Friday night she drowned. He wept. And he closed with, through his sobs, “Nobody is coming to get us, nobody is coming to get us.” As he put it, the Calvary did not come.

What’s shameful, is that not only did the Calvary not come, but it is blaming the people left behind in the wake of the storm. I have written before about the present administration’s penchant for behaving like a batterer. But on top of it all, we now seem to have a batterer that says it’s not his fault his wife just got hit by a bus as she backed out of the front drive. It’s not his fault she has a black eye, a punctured rib, some broken bones, a concussion. His wife should have seen the bus coming(evacuated) and now the batterer would like to sit on the couch (stay on vacation, go shopping, get a good night’s rest), on top of the car keys (disaster relief, food, water, counseling, shelter, medicine) and drink a cold beer, preventing the victim from getting to the hospital. Some will say that the administration didn’t create the hurricane. True. But as Broussard so poignantly pointed out, "bureaucracy is committing murder here." And that’s even worse.

Something else that occurs to me is that our batterer in question doesn’t seem to want to do his job either. I am starting to wonder just what the federal government thinks it is supposed to do. We hear a lot about what the federal government’s job is not, even as they label the democrats and progressives in this country “pessimists”. The federal government doesn’t want to give us health care. Or Social Security. Or any social welfare programs if at all possible. They don’t give us jobs. Or make a better economy. Or balance the budget. Or give us reasonable gas prices. What is this better America that these yahoos are promising us? What is their optimistic picture of a better America? I have yet to see it. From here, and you better believe, from much of the South, it appears that life today is much worse than it was a year ago. And now, we learn that it's not their job to help out in times of national crisis, either. Disaster relief is not really their responsibility. It’s the local government’s job.

What exactly is this president’s job description? What exactly is a federal government for? Why are we "married" to this man? This man who threatens us, bullies us, beats us down, sends our sons and daughters off to die in far away lands, who keeps us from meaningful work, who makes our lives worse every day, and who takes endless vacations and when he does go to work, shirks his responsibility all day long, and tells us really we are to blame for his incompetence? The country weeps with you, President Broussard. It is not your fault.