After Re-#Watching #Treme Re-#Reading #TheTinRoofBlowdown
some final thoughts on
Gratuitous Violence Post Katrina;

Whether COOPERATION or COMPETITION is the cultural norm in a country, there will always be a number of people with an extreme commitment to that norm. And nowhere is the social eugenicist’s wet dream of competition more normal than at the carefully constructed and maintained margins of US society.

The wonder is not that overt gratuitous violence exists, but how little there is. It’s not “all guns” - I’d wager policing adds to a great deal of it.

Re-visiting reports that during the first desperate week of Katrina the state ordered police and troops to open fire on looters, I’m reminded of the contrasting response to disaster in Japan, after Fukushima; and the sight of an old man weeping with shame because, after 3 days, he had broken into a house and stolen a bottle of water to take to his dying wife.

How much cognitive dissonance must it take to cling to the idea #Crapitalism is not violence? Not just unfettered capitalism, but an extreme capitalism reliant on government welfare directed solely at mega-corporations, and party crones.
Any god who can’t dream up a better way to order society than deny people even a CHANCE at somehow procuring basic food, shelter, medical care or a god that denies people even hope is a fairly shit god, and probably a god designed by someone with something they value more than other humans

Re-#Watching #Treme (post Katrina New Orleans)
Review part 5

Found myself then re-#Reading #TheTinRoofBlowdown 2007
author #JamesLeeBurke was born in 1936 so his style and characters are a wee bit dated but I found his story about Katrina riveting all over again.

Tin Roof supplements Treme as a source of insights into all the rorting grifting and political disregard behind the US Federal govt inaction then non-response to Katrina.

Treme has a lot to say about why no one wanted those displaced by Katrina to come back (for a start, those remaining would be more likely to vote republican); and shows how billions were wasted on housing schemes. The Tin Roof Blowdown has the sort of commentary that makes some detective novels so satisfying; Place is a major character, and “the character of that character” is everything.