Myths of civilisational collapse. posted by Richard Seymour

We've heard them all. New Orleans allegedly descended into Hobbesian anarchy, was "raped". Someone recounts the old saying that civilisation is only three meals away from collapse. Timothy Garton Ash regurgitates his ponderous meanderings for The Guardian to remind us that "Decivilisation is not as far away as we like to think". Such is, of course, a hallmark of conservative "anti-utopian" thought. Violence, they say, is hard-wired into human nature - Stephen Pinker has provided the rock solid scientific proof, didn't you know. Hence martial law, troops and mercenaries roaming the streets, aid cut off, communication lines cut, roadblocks set up. It is containment, the loving smack of firm government.

Before I go on, I want to mention in this connection, this egregious article which has the salacious headline "Survivors' horror tales of raping and looting". It leaves the source of its claims to the last quarter of the story, padding it out with details about the failure of residents to clear off out of New Orleans. It then cites, as its evidence, the story of a man who feared that his daughter might be raped by "looters" and therefore had her guarded. That is, not actual rape or violence: the mere fear of it, the mere charge, is the case for the prosecution. And this evidence-free story points to a similarly warped perception, as their main eyewitness explains that the black guys were plotting to murder them for being white, and the nice security guys said that the buses had been turned away to protect them. As others have reported, this is largely if not wholly fiction. As blogger Digby writes, there is a history of this kind of thing.

Yet, as usual, reports from the ground bely this dystopian picture and provide both hope and anger in abundance. For instance:

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water. (Via)

Oh, but it goes on:

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O’Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone; we would have some security, being on an elevated freeway; and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet-to-be-seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot. Meanwhile, the only two city shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.

Organised, thoughtful, considerate, yet thwarted by an act of government.

Then there is the story of three students who faked IDs so that they could ferry out survivors:

“We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn’t go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai,” said Hans Buder, who made the trip with his roommate Byrd and another student, David Hankla. …

“Anyone who knows that area, if you had a bus, it would take you no more than 20 minutes to drive in with a bus and get these people out,” Buder said. “They sat there for four or five days with no food, no water, babies getting raped in the bathrooms, there were murders, nobody was doing anything for these people. And we just drove right in, really disgraceful. I don’t want to get too fired up with the rhetoric, but some blame needs to be placed somewhere.”

Of course this is exactly what Geraldo Rivera and Shep Smith reported on Fox News of all places. Ordinary people were being denied the right to escape on foot.

Of course, the fact that people were so organised is no surprise. It was the citizens on 9/11 who, while being depicted as nothing more than a hysterical mob on television, helped ferry ten thousand people across the Hudson river for treatment. Often here it is the work of volunteers that is making a difference. Yet those who try to help have often been prevented from doing so.

Sanity demands that the Bush administration will pay a hefty price for this disgrace, particularly when the President can't see that anything went wrong, the army thinks their plan was executed absolutely flawlessly and Cheney hails "relief efforts".

One reason to be hopeful: Bush's disapproval rating has climbed to 52%, the highest in his Presidency. This could yet prove to be the biggest political crisis that this vicious administration has yet faced.

Oh, and by the way? The evacuation of New Orleans is not disease driven. Of course, it could be driven by: get out you povo fucks, you're not coming back.