Hurricane Reality vs. Right-Wing Ideology

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted September 8, 2005.

Hurricane Katrina blew away not only roofs, levees and lives, but also some of the right's most cherished -- and well-funded -- beliefs. The depth of the disconnect between the right's narrative of what American society should look like and the facts on the ground was almost unspinnable. Reality was hard to stave off in the aftermath of such a disaster.

Some tried. The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger took the opportunity to argue that "poorly incentivized" public bureaucracies "are going to get us killed" and call for outsourcing emergency response functions.

The National Review's Kate O'Beirne wrote that the contrast between Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mississippi's Haley Barbour should leave Hillary Clinton supporters "dismayed at the latest example of why voters might be leery of women chief executives."

Further on the fringe, blogger Michael Calderon at David Horowitz's Frontpage Magazine saw in Katrina the potential for a civil war following a major terror attack in the U.S. and envisioned a Hobbesian war of all against all, predicting -- with just a bit too much enthusiasm -- this apocalyptic scenario:

Expect heavily armed and infuriated conservatives to launch a cleansing war against the traitors. The armed will mow down the mostly unarmed segments, especially those elements that devoted 40-plus years to anti-American hatred to destroy this country. Should the likes of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Michael Moore, Ward Churchill, Dennis Raimondo [sic], et al. act out their sedition ... expect their bodies to be found shot full of holes ... Leftist professors will be strung up. It will be every man, woman, and child for themselves.

And, also predictably, other nutters saw the storm as part of God's wrath for New Orleans' sinful ways (ignoring that some of the staunchest Bible-belt counties in the South were also devastated).

The first ideological victim of the hurricane on the right was the notion of a classless, race-blind society in which we all share the same opportunity to thrive. A media that routinely deletes any reference to race and class was forced to openly confront the desperate and almost purely monochromatic reality of the hurricane's survivors.

The notion -- briefly floated by some conservatives -- that Katrina's victims have some personal responsibility for not leaving when the evacuation orders came down was swiftly deflated. The Washington Post noted that "living paycheck to paycheck made leaving impossible":

To those who wonder why so many stayed behind when push came to water's mighty shove here, those who were trapped have a simple explanation: Their nickels and dimes and dollar bills simply didn't add up to stage a quick evacuation mission.

The New York Times' David Brooks -- who seemed especially shaken by the images coming out of the Gulf Coast -- lamented that Katrina represented a confidence-shattering rip in our social fabric as "the rich escaped while the poor were abandoned," a move he called "the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield."

On the question of class, the storm landed at an inopportune moment for conservatives. Katrina hit smack in the middle of a year-long public debate about the United States' growing inequality (in just about every way one can measure it).

The back and forth started in May, when both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal [$$] (followed by others) began a series on the growing wealth gap in America. The right responded with the usual charge that a liberal agenda was cooking the books -- despite Alan Greenspan weighing in that there was, indeed, a potential problem -- and, alternatively, that what matters isn't what class we belong to but what class we believe we belong to, an argument voiced by, among others, Bruce Bartlett in the National Review.

Joshua Holland is a fair-trade activist, a freelance writer and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer blog.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »