In this thread of the discussion I would attempt to derail an argument which is that President Bush needs to meet some arbitrarily high standard of 'caring about black people' which we can take as caring for poor people. It seems to me that you cannot get to be President of the US without a cursory understanding that no amount of 'caring' is going to change the plight of the poor. However a campaign that is all about 'caring' can get you elected whether or not you do. In either case it is the health of the nation which determines the relative destitution of the poor. Our poor may digust us so that we turn away from the tube or make disparaging remarks, but it doesn't change the fundamental fact that we haven't discovered as many dead in this catastrophe as befalls the truly indigent in the third world. In other words, indigence is relative.
The literacy rate in America is something on the order of 98%. And we find reasons to find it pathetic that some Americans have no cars of their own or legions of buses and drivers at the ready. Some people in America don't eat for four days and we are stunned, shocked and scandalized. Some loony shoots dogs in an abandoned neighborhood and we get to know this and cluck our tongues in dismay. This and 3 dollar gas is the worst of our problems. Within two weeks, 60 billion is appropriated, millions of people contribute hundreds millions of dollars, and some of the greatest disgust is expressed at government officials who don't let every volunteer actually volunteer. That is nothing more or less than the definition of a great, powerful and privileged society.
I've said before that the American Negro Problem is not a problem any longer. So when I hear people gnash their teeth and heave vituperous remarks at the man in the Oval Office, I wonder if they are thinking with any sense of perspective whatsoever, or are they too so absolutely spoiled that they have no idea what this event means against the scope of human tragedy. But let me be specific and defend what so many consider indefensible - that the President does for the rich and ignores the poor.
The Internet works because it was based upon a communications protocol designed to survive nuclear attack. The Federal Reserve Bank works uniquely in the world. The interstate highway system in America is designed to handle truck and tank traffic. Wall Street exists for investors. If there weren't people who were extraordinarily demanding these things would not exist, and life would be tougher for you and me, and more intolerable than ever for the poor. We all have credit cards and electronic fuel injection and breakfast cereal because rich people have made those things possible. They didn't take all their money and run away to Las Vegas to blow it on the tables. It's working. There's orange juice in the ghetto because somebody decided to take millions of dollars and build trucks with refrigerators in them and drive them from California and Florida to every ghetto in America. Nobody in any ghetto knows how to farm oranges, but they drink orange juice. And they buy gasoline and electricity and natural gas. They can put their life savings in banks and the banks will never steal from them and all of us are guaranteed up to 100,000 by the FDIC - something you can't get in other nations. There was no cholera outbreak in New Orleans. There was no dysentery, no malaria, no dengue. Why? Because the economy of the US keeps extraordinary infrastructure working. They do it with lots and lots of money and lots of lots of rich people. Those rich people are as dependable as your bank and your electricity and your car insurance because there is no such thing as a poor person who ever ran a bank, utility or insurance company, and yet all Americans have equal access to all of those things, by law. Funny how that works.
America is not broken. The better off the economy is the better off we all are. You try building your own house some time. Try sewing your own clothes. Try financing your own car. Try processing your own sewage or generating your own heating. Try refining your own crude oil or God forbid, writing your own paycheck. You might learn what it's like to be a wealthy American. On the other hand, you already are.
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