The Brunch Table

This Harper’s article by Rebecca Solnit may be overexposed already, but it connects in precise language the laissez-faire conception of government and its wretched inability to deal with the aftermath of the hurricane. How, she asks, does this “limited government”–in which the citizen has a correspondingly limited voice–deal with its constituents?

We were told of “riots” and babies being murdered, of instances of cannibalism. And we were provided an image of authority, of control—of power as a necessary counter not to threats to human life but to unauthorized shopping, as though free TVs were the core of the crisis…

The most hellish image in New Orleans was not the battering waves of Lake Pontchartrain or even the homeless children wandering on raised highways. It was the forgotten thousands crammed into the fetid depths of the Superdome. And what most news outlets failed to report was that those infernos were not designed by the people within, nor did they represent the spontaneous eruption of nature red in tooth and claw. They were created by the authorities.”