Shaun Lewis: the Man, the Myth, the Legend

The world feels different.

That’s an interesting sentence to start a post with, and trust me, I’ll explain what I mean. You see, right now everything happening with Katrina seems unreal. Just in case you’ve been stuck under a rock or in a cave for the last week, Katrina isn’t a girlfriend of mine (me? girlfriend? that’s funny…); she’s a hurricane. Hurricane Katrina. You’ve heard the name, yes? Good.

The focus of this entry is specifically New Orleans. I know the hurricane hit other parts of the U.S. (and world) and hit them just as hard, or even harder, than New Orleans, but we don’t see the same kind of widespread despair elsewhere as we do in New Orleans. I have a lot of questions about this, but the biggest one is, “Why?” Why are there so many problems in New Orleans and not in places like Mississippi?

I can’t answer that and this troubles me.

There should be some sort of federal assistance because the local and state government clearly cannot do the job. Whether it be from poor leadership, lack of resources, or both, the those two governments are not doing their job. If one thing is patently obvious, it’s that.

I used the word “despair” above and it was intentional. My word choice is not hyperbolic; I believe that despair accurately describes what a lot of people are feeling right now. Even if the looting, robbing, raping and murder are contained or isolated, there are literally tens of thousands of homless (and JOBLESS) refugees (another accurate word) “living” in the city right now.

If there is a real threat to the people of the United States, whether it be terrorists, an invading army, weather, etc., and the local and state governments cannot deliver the kind of support necessary to maintain the safety and well-being of their citizens, it is the duty of the federal government to fix the problem.

In the absence of peace and tranquility, real leadership is needed. No one has demonstrated real leadership yet. The only person who comes close is the New Orleans Mayor. He seems to be doing clean-up work though for the problem that caused the flooding and everything else in the first place, however.

I heard Congress approved $10.5 billion for help. Why did it take so long? Why is no one still in New Orleans?

When help does arrive, there could a problem with political backlash. The White House will try to spin the fact that it arrived so people don’t start asking, “What the hell took so long?” I mean, this isn’t something you can just explain away as traffic problems. Going out of New Orleans, maybe, but I doubt there were many cars coming into the city on I-10.

Except for maybe news vans, of course.

Yes, the media has certainly saturated the airwaves with stories, pictures and speculations about Katrina. So much so, in fact, that as of writing this there is no other news in the world according to CNN. Forget about anything else like this.

For once in my life I’m not mad at the media though. I’m mad because there are innocent people dying while others wait for either permission to do something or… I don’t know.

I really don’t know what’s going on.