Well Joe,
The more things change the more they stay the same. Things are a little weird here in Katrinaland. I watched the good folks down in New Orleans (one of the musical capitals of the universe) sell out to their idiot mayor and scratched first my head then my butt. Now I see that what is being rebuilt here are the casinos, one by one and two by two, not unlike Noah's own damned swindle at saving us all.
And you know what the observation I have made is? It's a fucking rat race, and the lead rats all wear the corporate colors. Nationwide, State Farm, Allstate (with their good hands) and the other insurers ask us nicely to bend over, lube us up and administer the screwing, and we seem to enjoy it. Just as we evidently enjoy the administration doing the exact same thing to us year after year.
Status quo ante Katrina ain't good enough folks, because not enough of us realized how well and thoroughly we were being screwed then. Let's wake the hell up and go to the streets -- assuming there are any 50-somethings left out there who know how satisfying it is to actually win one against the machine every now and then.
Jeff
Mississippi
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Dear Jeff:
Free market capitalism is a very holistic machine with very little or no variation from the largest global corporate aspects to the smallest. Rather like a wolf, it is an opportunistic feeder, and feasts most when disaster or fate weakens its prey. But there is no way the ordinary American working person can come to grasp the entirety of its implications, because from where he stands in the whole scheme, all he can see over his wall of bills is the holographic media spectacle specially manufactured to divert his sight from the extractive system iwhich orchestrates his life. Meanwhile, to quote the Grateful Dead, "In the backwash of fennario, in the black and bloody mire, the dire wolf collects his dues . . ."
I lived in New Orleans on Rue de Ursuline for a while in 1969, and after I got over the horror of the Katrina disaster, I remember telling my wife "Well Hon, here is Disney and Harrah's next big opportunity." I thought I was making a rather bitter joke at the time.
As to taking to the streets, well, even in 1969 N'walins folks, fine as they are, were already so colonialized by the tourist industry, so sold on the media mystique about New Orleans, so divided by their class heritage, it was already over regarding active resistance down there.
But at least everyone knew how to enjoy life in America's last remaining culturally unique city. I understand that one of the large casino outfits has proposed recreating the Indian Bands, using white Las Vegas style show girls and professional musicians, and has applied for cultural heritage funds and tax breaks for that purpose. Is that true?
In brotherhood,
Joe
