Give Him an Extra Buck

In an early scene in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, the brilliant doctor demonstrates for adoring medical students his wizardry in pain suppression by describing his sure fire methods and then kicking his subject in the testicles. As they cart the writhing old man off on a gurney, Frankenstein, in a muttered aside, orders, “Give him and extra buck.”

America has not suffered pain for a long time. The Great Depression is but the subject of anecdotes of semi-senile seniors like Wild Bill. World War II has been made glamorous by those glorifying the `Greatest Generation’ and who have transformed the pain and fear of the times into glory. Vietnam is invoked but never analyzed.

But America is in pain today, and it is a phenomenon that we are ill equipped to face. Far away, our sons and daughters are facing deadly danger from an almost invisible enemy. Here at home, Louisiana and Mississippi are confronting a natural disaster greater than any in living memory, probably greater than any in our history as a nation.

It is our great misfortune that these two events are more than a little related. Thousands of members of the National Guard from the states most impacted by Hurricane Katrina who would ordinarily be part of the cleanup and solution are, instead, victims of the natural disaster. Not only are they unable to lend their muscle and expertise to mitigating the problems, their families are less able to cope the situation with their loved ones being in harms way on the other side of the globe.

The human catastrophe on the American Gulf Coast is of epic proportions with hundreds if not thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. The closing of the Port of Southern Louisiana, the largest port in the U.S. and the fifth largest in the world was quickly felt around the country when gasoline prices jumped off the charts. All of these possibilities have been studied for years. THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A SURPISE TO THE ADMINISTRATION!

It appears that the oil producing facilities and port infrastructure in the Gulf region are not beyond repair and that the port will be ale to be saved and put back in operation – after heroic effort and the passage of much time. Sadly, the process will be slowed by the absence of those who make the system work and who find themselves disbursed to the four winds by the flooding and destruction.

America’s great heartland production is stuck waiting for the port to reopen, and the supplies necessary to run the states above the Delta sit offshore.

Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presided over a government and country that has worked overtime to undue the structures put in place by administrations from the early nineteen thirties until the late seventies that gave government a great role in solving the calamities that had marred these earlier periods.

The politics of `me’ based on the philosophy of Ayn Rand where everyman is an island has come to reign. Government is just a boatload of bureaucrats looking to pick the pockets of honest folks and to bask in luxury while the genius of the market languishes.

In today’s Washington Post there were two columns that inspired this posting. E.J. Dionne, Jr. quotes former Maine Senator and Defense Secretary William Cohen who pithily put his finger on the problem. “Government is the enemy until you need a friend.” David Ignatius invokes the late Eric Sevareid view that civilization is only about seven meals away from anarchy. (Dionne’s column is linked at the end of this posting. I couldn’t attach Ignatius’s column but recommend that you read it on line. It is entitled: Time to Mend the Safety Net.)

For a generation, America has drifted away from Europe in its ideas of what a government should be doing. Our leaders have smiled knowingly that our course toward the selfishness of bigger houses and more wasteful engines was far superior to the cozy dwellings and motor bikes of “Old Europe.” We know that materialism is better than the semi-socialist schemes of Denmark and Holland.

But now we are facing joint calamities made worse by starving government budgets. Ignatius points out that it is not the `thousand points of light’ of Bush 41 that the man standing on the roof of the house surrounded by flood water is looking for to save him. It is the Coast Guard, the police, or the National Guard soldier at the helm of a rescue boat that he is seeking.

It is government – federal, state and local – that must put the Mississippi River and the lives of our dispirited citizens back together. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army can provide hot meals and shelter in the short term. But it is government – fueled by us all – that must restore lives and guide the restoration of the heartland. These governments have been emasculated and laughed at by a generation of me firsters, and it is not nearly well enough equipped to do the job as it should be.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090102032.html

Blog on!

Wild Bill