LOUISIANA CONFIDENTIAL: NO Mayor Nagin:"Let's do something and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country"

But thousands of people are feared dead and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said he was furious at the lack of help his historic city had received.

"I need reinforcements. I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man," he said in a radio interview. "Now get off your asses and fix this. Let's do something and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country."
- Reuters

When this is all said and done, Ray Nagin will be remembered as the man who watched the Big Easy collapse. He and the other elected representatives from Louisiana have every right to be angry. Louisianans have every right to be angry.

And this morning, I'm so fucking embarrassed to call myself an American.

I can't sleep I'm so angry. I haven't eaten much in the last two days I'm so angry.

There are now gangs raping and pillaging across New Orleans. I've gotten reports -- rumors from the refugee camps in Baton Rouge (lets quit using goddamned euphemisms at this point - evacuees seems to imply that the American public somehow cares enough about its own people to do something) -- that there's break-ins, locals exploiting their guests, people being asked to stay indoors after dark, and underequipped recovery workers screaming everywhere for help from everywhere.

And I'm wondering who's listening?

Every day, an American state falls deeper into a heart of darkness, deeper into something more similar to to Mogadeshu, Baghdad, Darfur. There is talk of dyptheria, malaria, cholera outbreaks.

Certainly not the majority of Americans, I'm starting to believe.

Here in Oxford, I've heard more "Oh, that's too bad"s and "wish I could help, but..."s coming from people's mouths lately that I'm starting to prefer hearing nothing at all. The only sincere expressions of concern I've heard recently have, well, come from my colleagues. I had a woman from another department swing by and ask how I was doing. I told her, well, that I was just glad to be alive.

I've even heard guys make jokes about the whole thing - "No more Girls Gone Wild Videos, huh?" and "Cell Phones? They can't read in Louisiana, why would they have cell phones?"

The last joke, by the way, came from a skinny-ass mop-topped kid in some real fine designer duds. If he'd been a little older, and I was in the mindset I had when I was younger, I would've easily whooped the Abercrombie & Fitch out of him in front of his girlfriend.

Instead, I simply walked it off, reminding myself of the old rule of turning the other cheek - it is better to walk the road of peace and to swing by a church and ask for the strength to walk a righteous path than to accept the shallowness of violence.

I realized tonight that I'm not the only one angry with the way the U.S. has responded, the sheer apathy and rag-tag recovery efforts that are a result of a decade's worth of being a generally self-absorbed, materialistic, and gluttonous nation.

When this is all said and done, Ray Nagin won't be remembered as the man who watched the Big Easy collapse or stood by while the Gulf Coast bloated like a corpse in the South's steamy September.

If things don't improve, the only persons responsible for a state's brutal collapse...will be us.

All of us.

Failure to act is the worst form of cowardice.

God help us all.

ZP