Two months later and the world has totally changed.
In case you missed it at the end of my last ramblings, Anna and I are expecting again. That's our biggest news on a personal level. But unless
you've been on Mars, you know all about the double whammy that has hit the Gulf coast.
I've never been to New Orleans, and now I never will, at least not the way it was. While I don't doubt that there will always be Mardi Gras, Jazz,
and Cajun cooking, they will exist in a city that has drastically changed. Even if they somehow could rebuild it exactly the way it was, the people
have been touched by a disaster that has affected them on too many levels to ever get their lives back to anything resembling the normal they
knew. The worst part is that it was the every day people, the ones who really are the life blood of any city, who were most affected. The working
class, or more appropriately, the working poor. Those who, even when ordered to leave, couldn't. In spite of the coming storm, they couldn't take
the day off, couldn't afford the gas to go any where, couldn't afford a hotel room when they got there.
Unfortunately, their in-ability to leave was coupled with poor planning on the part of relief agencies. They had assumed the most people would
have followed the evacuation order. They hadn't counted on the thousands, then the hundreds of thousands that would need help. Was it their
fault they couldn't leave? No. Was it FEMA's fault they didn't get help right away? No. Who’s to blame? Well, if we must blame someone, then all of
America is to blame. All of us.
All of us because we have accepted a system where we have a class of people who work hard day after day but still live on the fringe of
starvation. A system where stuff has taken priority over concern for your fellow man. A system where we assume that just because the poorest
American has more then the wealthiest person in the so-called Third World that they have all they need to survive in the American Way.
I am tired of people who are looking for a scapegoat. The head of FEMA resigned. That wasn't good enough, so people are asking for the
President to be removed. Why? Because that same system that has allowed the term "working poor" become part of our vocabulary also has led
us to believe that nothing is our fault, it’s always someone else to blame.
When are we going to realize that selfish materialism has given us a reality just as fake and unfulfilling as the computer generated world in the
movie "The Matrix". A reality driven and controlled by the machines of wealth, greed, and fantasy of a better life full of stuff. And underneath is
the
gritty reality of those under the machine's spell, a class of people who do 90% of the work for 10% of the reward.
There is a better way. Some of us have found it. We haven't arrived yet, but we're on the way. Have we escaped the Matrix? No, but we know
we will. In the meantime we don't have to follow the rules, because the rules of the world ain't working for us, they're working against us. What is
this way? Maybe you've heard it, too.
"Jesus said 'I am the way, the truth, and the life...'"
