I was only there once, and it was sweltering and overwhelming and fascinating and now it's gone, maybe for months, maybe forever. I dreamt last night that I was in a city like New Orleans, running away from 20-foot waves crashing into buildings, hugging brick walls every time one would crash over. In the dream, brick walls protected us from the water. In real life, not so much.
And as much as I agree that, yes, building the levee system eroded nature's protection against this sort of devastation, and yes, sending National Guards and diverting money into Iraq left us bereft of our ability to deal with emergencies at home (emergencies caused in large measure, many speculate, by climate change), I'm just too burnt out to want to hear it. I may agree with it, but I have as little patience for it as I do for the newsbots Teresa mentions who use the word "looting" for black people and "finding" for white folks, or the hallucinatory religious wackos Amanda discusses who interpret a satellite photo as looking like a fetus and thus, since Louisiana (like every other state in the union) has abortion clinics it's a sign from God that, I dunno, I lost interest after that. Honestly, these folks think likenesses of Jesus appear on foodstuffs and Mary graces them via underpass stains, and it's not like they even know what the historical Jesus family looked like! And don't get them started on maps! They see things everywhere. It's a good thing they're so ign'ant about things outside their little enclaves, goodness knows how they'd interpret Italy resembling a boot! Probably sexually, they do seem obsessed about that, and it's usually about as far as their imagination will stretch - either holy pictures or dirty ones. Surely those of us who used to see horsies in the clouds have a little more creativity. (And really, if you want to make accusations about God's wrath, the areas hardest hit are mostly so-called "red states"...)
And as much as I agree that, yes, building the levee system eroded nature's protection against this sort of devastation, and yes, sending National Guards and diverting money into Iraq left us bereft of our ability to deal with emergencies at home (emergencies caused in large measure, many speculate, by climate change), I'm just too burnt out to want to hear it. I may agree with it, but I have as little patience for it as I do for the newsbots Teresa mentions who use the word "looting" for black people and "finding" for white folks, or the hallucinatory religious wackos Amanda discusses who interpret a satellite photo as looking like a fetus and thus, since Louisiana (like every other state in the union) has abortion clinics it's a sign from God that, I dunno, I lost interest after that. Honestly, these folks think likenesses of Jesus appear on foodstuffs and Mary graces them via underpass stains, and it's not like they even know what the historical Jesus family looked like! And don't get them started on maps! They see things everywhere. It's a good thing they're so ign'ant about things outside their little enclaves, goodness knows how they'd interpret Italy resembling a boot! Probably sexually, they do seem obsessed about that, and it's usually about as far as their imagination will stretch - either holy pictures or dirty ones. Surely those of us who used to see horsies in the clouds have a little more creativity. (And really, if you want to make accusations about God's wrath, the areas hardest hit are mostly so-called "red states"...)
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