New Orleans 2005 and the Fall of the Mask

The devastation that happened and still happening in New Orleans, as we write now, shows the fall of the mask from all of us. The mask of racial tranquility and harmony. The facts on the ground are ugly and conscience's awakening. There are still hundreds of thousands of American who still live in a third world country circumstances that live within the greatest and the richest country on earth. People who for whatever reason, mainly the color of their skin, live on the far end of society, they are the forgotten people that we only hear of when disasters strike. We heard of them during the California and other states riots, and now we know that they exist because nature exposed them. We knew that devastation is in its way and we did not do much, at least something that we can talk about. We know the Gulf of Mexico, we know the Mississippi and we still could not build enough dams or enough gates, barriers, levees, I will leave the technical terms to engineers, to protect our people against natural disasters. We knew that there are tens of thousands of people who can not evacuate themselves, we knew everything but we just did not move. We did not have a strong proactive leadership, on all levels that would predict, plan and execute a methodical emergency plan. The pictures talk volumes of the rust that penetrates our body. Obviously most of those that could not move were in the minority and obviously those who counted them out or did not count them at all were our officials, local and federal. I was glancing at the international papers, Arabic and else and the whole world was at shock not at the disaster but at our “impotence” as the greatest country on earth to deal with it, prepare for it, minimize the damage and manage the destruction. But, still, amidst all this, America has a unique trend that it tries to be better, it tries to improve and correct. America with all it's institutions including it's free press does at least shed the light on the deficiencies of our society. It's always a great first step.