Conservative Government Destroys Atlanta Like Gen. Sherman Never Could

By Rick Perlstein, Blog for Our Future. Posted June 23, 2008.

Most our media have been far too busy following the news of what kind of fist bumps terrorists favor, and Luke Russert's exceptional poise under pressure, to notice -- well, much of anything. Least of all, the Biblically proportioned drought in one of our nation's fastest growing regions, which is only getting worse, and more civilizationally consequential, by the day.

Atlanta magazine could no longer ignore it. The cover of their "The Water Issue," which I picked up on a recent swing thorugh Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, is graced by a water glass that's one-quarter full -- scratch that, three-quarters empty. The entire magazine is a fascinating document, a potsherd for future archeologists seeking answers to the kind of neuroses that allowed a civilization let itself be run according to an ideology -- conservatism -- so singularly unfit to govern a complex, modern society. Amidst all the schmancy department store and Cartier watch ads, the columns on "Scent marketing" ("among Advertising Age's top ten trends to watch in 2007") and enticements to purchase property at marquee destinations like The Inn At Palmetto Bluff ("50 beautifully appointed waterfront cottages, full-service spa, inspired Lowcountry, cuisine, exlusive Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course...") -- the landscaping ad featuring the gushing backyard waterfall alongside the furnished stone gazebo was an especially decadent touch, directly across fro a full page ad for "Brookhaven Retreat, treating both addiction and mental health challenges" -- these 176 pages document a narcissistic metropolis on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but not quite able to admit it.

In a letter to subscribers, the editor describes what it was like growing up in the Third World, as a child of missionaries: "In one of the places we stayed, water was piped in only one hour a day -- we had to run around with buckets and pots to catch every drop. in another, water that collected in rooftop tanks would turn scalding int he midday tropical heat. No matter where we traveled, flush toilets were a rarity." That's what she's been thinking of, walking into all the Atlanta bathrooms with "empty buckets near the tub": Atlantans, you see, have begun flushing their toilets with recycled bath water.

The fashion shoot, lithesome models swaddled in this summer's "bright colors and bold lines," is apocalyptically staged in an empty swimming pool. Equally apocalyptic is the comic-book style feature about Atlanta ca. 2050 as a civilization straight out of Soylent Green ("Inevitably, water thieves find a way to get around the system, but penalties are draconian. The water corps has the legal authority to SHOOT TO KILL"). The accompanying features on what happened and why are exemplary -- save for the absence of one concept Atlanta (which on page 26 endorses, tongue only half in cheek, libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr) can't quite bring itself to utter: conservatism.

One phrase they do manage to use: states rights. Portentously, in 1990, Governor Hunt of Alabama, joined by the governor of Florida, sued Georgia, "with its endless development" and "unquenchable thirst for water," to keep the Army Corps of Engineer from sharing "their" water resources. All told over the entire United States, the Army Corps of Engineers built and runs 464 lakes in 43 states, one of them Atlatna's life-giving Lake Lanier; but the notion of the federal government actually coordinating all these resources for the common good would just be too, too un-American to contemplate. Instead, this civil war has ratcheted up to Israel-Palestine levels. "In March, U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kepthorne finally put the bickering governors in a collective time-out after they missed a deadline to come up with a tri-state agreement." There hasn't been any agreement yet. Southerners are a prideful pack, after all, loath to take dictation from pointy-headed bureaucrats in Washington.

States rights: that fetish of generations of Southern politicians desperate for a rhetorically innocent way to institutionalize their rage at federal demands for equal racial justice. It has come back now to bite Dixie rather soundly in the ass. Actually, the ideology is more pathological than mere states rights: the zero-sum war of all against all has descended to the level of the localities, with Augusta's blessing. "To Perdue, water is a local issue. 'The state can be there to help...but we should not be in the business of directing and instructing communities on how to do their business," [press secretary Bert] Brantley says.... Last year, Alabama went to court to stop the city of Canton and the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority's (CCMWA) construction of the Hickory Log Creek Reservoir in Cherokee County -- four weeks shy of the dam's projected completion." One of the package's articles narrates the Hatfield-and-McCoy-like feud between the counties of Douglas and Cobb, when an administrator in the former had the forsight to plan for a possible drought, building a new reservoir, banning outdoor watering -- only to see the Cobb connive in the state legislature, like Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood, to siphon off Douglas's suddenly flush water resources.

See more stories tagged with: water, conservatism, georgia, atlanta

Rick Perlstein is the author of "Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fall of the American Consensus" (Scribner, 2008). Read more at Rick Perlstein's site.

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