Emotional Equations

The ability to generalize about things is often considered one of the great human attributes. As someone actually said to me yesterday, from the safe and the normal conditions in Kansas City, MO, one can easily generalize the emotional equation of life in New Orleans into a collective wallowing. She was, "Crocheting clothing for trolls."

Anyway, it's an easy default to meet this collective dismissive with collective anger. Collective anger eliminates the feelings helplessness and abandonment by exchanging it for a moribound sense of community. Feelings of abandonment and distrust flourish in situations where someone really has been humiliated, cheated, or insulted. This was affirmed yesterday in the Senate Subcommittee hearing, our Government is less than willing to assist the citizens of New Orleans beyond the current anemic level of allocation. Yet, today, the Senate passed Bush's Military spending bill without any timeline for ending the cash guzzling quagmire. We will continue to shovel money into the war in Iraq, which was largely based on lies, just as we have for the last five years. It's somewhat sinister that this military spending bill includes $17 billion in unrelated domestic spending, with considerable portions earmarked for rebuilding infrastructure in New Orleans. It seems, that rather than giving money to people to rebuild their homes, it was ok to hand it to Bush's big buddy contractors and banks.

Our real, long-term, heightened state of insecurity is exhausting on its own. But it looks like we are going to continue to be hostages to Bush's Terror Nation mentality, so he can continue to pipeline cash to his friends.

It turns into emotional trigonometry. The best thing we might do is to try to keep the equation linear. We need to remind ourselves that anger is often rooted in fear. Fear is often based on some 'unknown' which ultimately results in zero sums for us on the ground. After another nine months, citizens in New Orleans seem to be locked in a long series of unknowns. Our life in variables. At the beginning of another hurricane season.