(no subject)

[lapsedmodernist]

Reporters begin to fear for their lives...doesn't this read like a story out of Baghdad?

"There was no crowd control," Russell said. "People were swarming. It was a near riot situation. The authorities have got to get some military down here to get control of the situation."

Well, actually...

Iraq-tested soldiers in New Orleans with shoot to kill orders

Aaron Brown just said 50-60% of police deserted, turning in their badges, saying they couldn't protect themselves, much less anyone else.

I know that on the tinfoil scale, with 1 being Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone and 10 being 9/11 MIHOP I am about a 7, but does anyone else think that in addition to this being handled tragically, atrociously and ttlly in character for this Ademonistration, there are some large, overarching ulterior motives, like oil price manipulation or a performance to convince Americans that federal agencies should be privatized or a setup to make Americans "choose"/"ask for" domestic martial law as precedent, like an auspicious flooding of the Reighstag?

Or is it really just catastrophic incompetence that has made the quantitative leap to evil?

Comments

Reaganstag

[paracelsus.livejournal.com]

I know you'll keep posting anyway, but given that it's hard to get all the news from down here I just wanted to say I appreciate both your efforts and your indignation. Thanks.

Catastrophic Incompetence and Fascism

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I think it's not the Reichstag, but could function the same way -- since catastrophic incompetence leads to calls for the government to take any steps to mitigate the evils it has so far failed to remedy; and that therefore the very fact that it can't do things in a reasonable way gives it a warrant to do them unreasonably. How far are we from fascism? Well, honestly, it would still take a whole lot to get there. But not nearly as much as it should. It's like the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration are a category 2 storm where 4 is Mussolini and 5 is Nazism. They'll probably just blow themselves out, and we'll be spared. But it turns out we're not nearly well-enough protected from the dangers they represent, and if with just the right mix of luck, we could be out of it.

[pirat-ponton.livejournal.com]

an engineered facade, the public perception of incompetence?

like almost every other endeavor of this criminal administration, we are witnessing a multi-billion dollar swindle

[theodora.livejournal.com]

Gross fucking incompetance.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Or is it really just catastrophic incompetence that has made the quantitative leap to evil?

Or is it the other way around? which might be a Gramscian way of looking at the whole horrible thing.

[cascadianista.livejournal.com]

You aren't the first one to mention the case for privatization. I'm not sure where I read it since I've been reading so much the past few days, but that idea is definitely floating around out there.

Given what the neocons want to do with Social Security, it makes sense that they'd want to privatize agencies like FEMA as well, but I doubt they planned to fuck it up in order to make a case for doing so. The thing that takes the air out of most of these conspiracy theories for me is the fact that so many people would know about it, and it only takes one to go to the press and blow it wide open, especially when a lot of lives are lost. The government didn't plan 9/11, and they didn't plan this. It was the result of a combination of incompetence, poor planning and a willful misallocation of funds to a war of choice.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

You have to admit the 9/11 thing is a little more tricky. It doesn't take a lot of people to sidestep out of the way of a raging bull. Little mistakes sometimes add up to big results.

(I advocate no position on this, just saying.)

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

unless I am misremembering, Paul Krugman has been talking about the privatization thing for some time. I agree with you mostly except that I am firmly convinced that the government knew very well 9/11 was going to happen and allowed it to proceed for their own PNAC purposes. I can't help thinking that in THIS case, since they DEFINITELY knew about Katrina, they allowed it to unfold the way it did for their own purposes again, like there was some meeting akin to meetings that go on in big corporations where they weigh recalls vs. costs in lawsuits.

[nearly-there.livejournal.com]

like there was some meeting akin to meetings that go on in big corporations where they weigh recalls vs. costs in lawsuits

It really does sound that way, doesn't it? Especially when you consider the people like W and Cheney who own huge amounts of stock in oil companies. How many overseas ones are capped and waiting for a surge in demand/prices? God, I truly hope that's not the case, but it's SO hard to not go all conspiracy theory on this one. I mean, given the near-immediate response to 9/11, it cannot possibly take 6 days to get National Guard members from Atlanta and other neighboring cities. And if it does, the military is in serious trouble.

I'm honestly wondering if W decided that New Orleans was like Sodom and Gomorrah and deserved to flood and burn to atone for the sin.

[orpheusinhades.livejournal.com]

I'm inclined to think it's incompetence. The administration has shown no particular competence in handling *anything* in my recollection - from the constant abuse that made Jeffords defect to the bungled war in Iraq. They have shown no particular ability in any field of government, either in PR or in actual results. I don't think that this is remarkable at all. If the administration was really that savvy they would be making a lot more of controlling all three branches of government. I think it's time to put away the tinfoil hat in favor of the bicycle helmet.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

they would be making a lot more of controlling all three branches of government.

um, how much more control do they need? They control all three branches and they did away with any meaningful election and appointment processes.

[orpheusinhades.livejournal.com]

My point is that given that immense power, they are really not doing anything. I mean, it's terrifying that such evil sons-of-bitches are running the show, but I would expect more massive changes to result, aside from running the country slowly into the ground. There are a dozen or so major policy changes the Republicans have been dying to make - what the hell are they doing? The majority of what's filtering down is incompetence rather than evil. Not that I'm not saying they're not both - but they seem to be too incompetent to do a good job being evil.

[creed-of-hubris.livejournal.com]

Incompetence and negligence.

They cut funding to the corps of engineers, to levee building, and to a study of NO hurricane preparedness. Whoops.

That and the stupid Wal-Mart gun racks that got cleaned out.

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

exactly. Criminally negligent and criminally incompetent. Practicing governing without a license. they've been doing this for five years now.

[mycrust.livejournal.com]

Well you know the razor about never ascribing to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Well, honestly, if they were not black and poor, I think there would have been more effort to try to save people, but I suspect it would still have ended in catastrophe due to ineptness.

What a nice welcome back to North America this has been for me.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Does the compass of Occam's Razor REALLY always point to ineptitude with this administration when the text of PNAC is public domain?

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

have you heard any about the hospital in NO that amy goodman reported about yesterday and the day before? yesterday, the person in the hospital said that they had 1200 people in the hospital and it was surrounded by five feet of water. they needed food and water (and electricity when the backup power fails eventually). it sounded really desperate.

[theorybitch.livejournal.com]

It strikes me that total militarisation has become the only paradigm in which the Bush government can work. The 'war' (which is really everywhere) has internalised itself in the Bush administration as a response to every emergency, real or artificial. So in a way, martial law would be only a continuation of that, not a corner turned.