"If you want to know what Miami's going to look like 100 years from now...
...go to New Orleans today." That's Mike Tidwell (Bayou Farewell, The Ravaging Tide), speaking on a typically excellent Bill Moyers Journal:

MIKE TIDWELL: What gives me optimism in the face of this overwhelming challenge, and, you know, Katrina really is a curtain-raiser. If you want to know what Miami's going to look like 100 years from now, go to New Orleans today. Below sea level, behind levees, battered by huge storms-- if we don't stop global warming. This climate crisis is here now. The Great Lakes are dropping in water levels. Texas has got too much rain. The Carolina's too little. Hurricanes are getting-- it's here now. It's not a my kinda sort of a maybe thing in the future that computer modeling says is coming. It's already deeply here.

So, the fact that it's here, that this giant climate system with all the momentum built in it toward warming, it's already unpacking its bags. What could possibly give us the optimism and hope that we can now respond at this late stage, strongly and fiercely enough to hold it in check? And the thing that I come back to is, when we decide to change, we tend to change explosively. You know, look at the great changes in World War II and all these things that have happened in the 20th Century. I believe that this issue of climate change and sustainable-- sustainability, which also implies questions of human rights, and fairness. When this light bulb finally goes on, and it's going on.

You know, I think Katrina opened the door, Al Gore walked through it. And the zeitgeist changes a lot more. But once we finally really get serious, we're going to change really fast."

Tidwell was joined by Melissa Harris-Lacewell. While at the University of Chicago, she co-authored the "2005 Racial Attitudes and the Katrina Disaster Study."

BILL MOYERS: What have you learned, the two of you, about politics, American politics from the Katrina disaster?

MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, I often say that Hurricane Katrina and it's political aftermath is the 2006 win of the democrats in the mid-term elections. And it--

BILL MOYERS: How so?

MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: I know it seems odd.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah.

MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Because it's not as though Katrina is at all even talked about in the 2006 elections. But you'll remember that from September 11th, 2001 until August 28th of 2005, one was unpatriotic if you criticized the Bush administration or really any of the actions taken by our government. So, the Democratic Party and much of the American media was quite timid in terms of its critique of the administration.

But what Katrina and the bungling of Katrina does is it provides a wedge that opens the door. And the criticisms start to flow from CNN, from-- and then from the Democratic Party. Now, the sad and scary thing is that all of these issues, urbanism, race, class, environmentalism which were the true core issues that made Katrina possible get lost. Because what the Democratic Party makes the choice to do is to use that wedge as an opportunity to critique Iraq. Not that it's-- I mean, it's fine, right? But they use that. And so then Iraq becomes the story of the 2006 elections.

BILL MOYERS: At the expense of Katrina?

MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: At the expense of Katrina. And all the lessons that Katrina had the capacity to teach us about domestic politics.

I think there's a lot to that, and I've also argued that Katrina was the key turning point for Bush's political fortunes. It's sad to see how little the Democratic leadership has done with the opportunity; it suggests they haven't understood much of anything about the last six years.

There was -- and maybe there still is -- an opportunity for tying it all together. I'm no political consulting whiz, but it might be something like for real security at home, against vainglorious and selfish politics abroad, for a sustainable future, against circling the wagons and living life under siege, for recommitting to the values of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the people of the United States, against sliding towards a national security and surveillance state run by and for corporations and political elites.

And for impeaching Bush and Cheney for their crimes and their neglect of their duties to the Constitution and the people of the United States, and against spending any more time finding excuses not to.

Anyhow, more excerpts at Recording Katrina -- or just go watch the whole thing. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Back-Talk etc.
OK, so maybe that last one wasn't worth the wait. This is -- the latest installment of the "Back-Talk" video series by "Unclassified Producer," via eRobin at "fact-esque":



So is this ad by the ACLU, briefly featured on the video. The ACLU is giving me ad whiplash -- first "Find Habeas," now this:



Click through to help run the ad!


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NOTES: Among the items cited in the Back-Talk clip are "War Crimes and the White House", by former Marine commandant P.X. Kelley and ex-Reagan administration offical Ron Turner; Bush's "capacity to interrogate, not torture but interrogate" comments to Katie Couric; former Reagan administration Treasury undersecretary Paul Craig Roberts "Impeach Now" article in Counterpunch and "The Raw Story" link to a radio interview with Thom Hartmann; Bruce Fein on Bill Moyers "Journal"; Bush lying about getting "court orders" for wiretaps (discussed here); ex-Senator and 9/11 commission member Bob Kerrey on Bush administration ignoring repeated warnings prior to 9/11. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:03:00 AM -- |    

 
The Illuminated Crowd

"A crowd has gathered, facing a light, an illumination brought about by a fire, an
event, an ideology - or an ideal. The strong light casts shadows, and as the light
moves toward the back and diminishes, the mood degenerates; rowdiness, disorder
and violence occur, showing the fragile nature of man. Illumination, hope,
involvement, hilarity, irritation, fear, illness, violence, murder and death
- the flow of man's emotion through space."

-- Raymond Mason, The Illuminated Crowd
(sculpture and words, 1985, Montreal)

Bear with me here; I doubt this will be an essay for the ages with a neatly constructed argument and conclusion. Instead, I'm going to wander around a bit, because I'm not sure where this is all headed myself.

We came across this sculpture while wandering about Montreal last week. It's on the Avenue McGill, just up the street from Indigo Books, and just down the street from McGill University, seemingly just another piece of plastic/corporate/civic art, in this case set in front of a faceless black glass and steel headquarters for one BNP Paribas Bank.

Another crowd, sixteen years later I'd never heard of it. But as I came closer, and read the words, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. It was like coming across a prediction of that September day going on six years ago, a prediction of how we -- or at least I and many like myself -- would react.

On the surface, of course, are the immediate reactions to an immediate, transfixing event. Mason's sculpture is all but a pre-enactment of photos like this one.* But Mason had more in mind than a crowd merely gaping at a disaster; it seems to me he was also driving at the repercussions over time of the fire, event, ideology -- or the fiery ideological event. As the description implies, you find expressions of despair, rage, fear, and finally acts of violence as you walk along the side of the sculpture group.

And that surely fits, too.

There's been an interesting set of posts touching on this lately. Roy Edroso's Writing Lesson contrasts a forthright statement by one individual, Christopher Hitchens, with a less forthright paraphrase of the same by Rod Dreher. In his 2002 Boston Globe piece, Hitchens recalls his sense of exhilaration as the implications he saw in 9/11 crystallized for him:

In order to get my own emotions out of the way, I should say briefly that on that day I shared the general register of feeling, from disgust to rage, but was also aware of something that would not quite disclose itself. It only became fully evident quite late that evening. And to my surprise (and pleasure), it was exhilaration. I am not particularly a war lover, and on the occasions when I have seen warfare as a traveling writer, I have tended to shudder. But here was a direct, unmistakable confrontation between everything I loved and everything I hated. On one side, the ethics of the multicultural, the secular, the skeptical, and the cosmopolitan. (Those are the ones I love, by the way.) On the other, the arid monochrome of dull and vicious theocratic fascism. I am prepared for this war to go on for a very long time. I will never become tired of waging it, because it is a fight over essentials. And because it is so interesting.**

As Edroso acknowledges, this is at least interesting and honest: "[o]ne of the things I still admire about Hitchens' writing is that I believe him: not his belligerent analyses, but his portrayal of his own thoughts and feelings." And in the daisy chain of posts leading back from Dreher through Ross Douthat to the original rediscoverer, Julian Sanchez, there's a common thread that there was something oddly "special" and unifying, even exhilarating, about 9/11. Sanchez:

...it is hard not to get caught up in that feeling. I recall Camus writing something similar about the feeling among members of the French Resistance, who in conditions that surely licensed despair felt a kind of supernatural energy at the chance to throw themselves into a cause so clearly vital and right, who saw that never again would their lives be so invested with meaning.

Canetti the Inevitable
But I think what Mason's sculpture suggests -- clearly, it proves nothing, it's "just" a very interesting sculpture -- is that there may have also been less to it than that.*** I hesitate to cite this, because I haven't read it in full, so it seems like name dropping. Plus it seems a little wide of the mark in some ways. But here goes anyway, from Elias Canetti's famous work "Crowds and Power":

The most important occurrence within the crowd is the discharge. Before this the crowd does not actually exist; it is the discharge which creates it. This is the moment when all who belong to the crowd get rid of their differences and feel equal.

These differences are mainly imposed from outside; they are distinctions of rank, status and property. Men as individuals are always conscious of these distinctions; they weigh heavily on them and keep them firmly apart from one another... [...]

Only together can men free themselves from their burdens of distance; and this, precisely, is what happens in a crowd. During the discharge distinctions are thrown off and all feel equal. In that density, where there is scarcely any space between, and body presses against body, each man is as near the other as he is to himself; and an immense feeling of relief ensues. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no-one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd.

But the moment of discharge, so desired and so happy, contains its own danger. It is based on an illusion; the people who suddenly feel equal have not really become equal; nor will they feel equal forever.

Like Mason's sculpture, this proves nothing, but it's surely apropos. I think many of us -- again, me included, but maybe also Hitchens included -- did feel a certain relief and exhilaration at being "united" about something again. It's very seductive to be part of a crowd, even a virtual one glued to our TV sets, or our online news reports -- or our warblogger echo chamber. In Terrorism, Crowds and Power, and the Dogs of War, Lesley Brill wrote:

Alongside the grief, fright, and disgust, however, one sensed a swelling pleasure, even exuberance, as among the stunned, delighted audience of an over-the-top horror movie. Was it because at last, after nearly thirty years, there was a real battle to join? [...]

Here, finally, came a crisis worthy of our half-trillion-dollar-a-year armed forces, one offering moral certitude and potential redemption. With it arrived a dreary, increasingly dangerous bonus: “After 9/11” instantly replaced “In the new Millennium” as the signal cliché for declaring Now to be definitively different from an outmoded Then.

So what
So how to wrap up? What to conclude? Like I said, I'm not sure; this is all pretty tenuous, plucked helter skelter from sociological meditation, art, and sundry quick stops along the Internet.

I guess it makes me not dismiss Dreher's allegedly "groupthink" reaction too much. It's just that the "clarity" he felt wasn't clarity so much as being spellbound and thinking that was clarity. At any rate, this sense of awesome togetherness was real -- and it was predictable.

The 9/11 moment was designed to be a gigantic groupthink moment, a "where were you when" moment -- an illuminated crowd moment. A nation in its millions transfixed, grieving, enraged -- and yes, comforted by the knowledge that you were part of a crowd, that nearly everyone else was feeling what you were feeling, too. I'm not saying Dreher was more honest than Hitchens, just that I think his reactions were believable too. (Not especially worthy, just believable.) Many people thought not in "I," but in "we."

So when Sanchez argues that Rove misplayed that violin, I suppose I disagree a bit with that, too. There may have been no good tune to play on that violin; this wasn't ever going to be the few, the proud, the Resistance, this was going to be an echoing mass moment on CNN, brought to you by Bin Laden first, and Rove and Bush thereafter. I don't disavow how I felt or how angry I was or that I wanted to see Bin Laden pounded flat or that I liked the unity I felt in that. I do see how predictable I was, and how easily the country (and I) could be played for suckers in the ensuing months and years.

So what's the antidote to all that? Maybe there isn't one. Maybe that's people for ya, at least most people.

But maybe being a little forewarned is to be a little forearmed if there's another 9/11. Beware of that pointing guy, saying "follow me, children! I'm sure I know what it all means." Or maybe the essential antidote is simply remembering Teresa Nielsen Hayden's insight:

"Just because you're on their side doesn't mean they're on your side."

Maybe less wallowing in the grief of it all would be wise, too. But good luck with that. We're not wise, we're hominids, we'll grieve, we'll wallow. When I see those pictures, I know I still do.


=====
* From the "Onlookers" section of the "Here is New York" site archiving 9/11-related photography. For more onlooker/crowd comparisons with the sculpture, see also "the illuminated crowd," a pooled shared online photo site at Flickr.com.
** Hitchens link via a comment by doghouse riley at Edroso's post; d.r. points out that the article was rather selectively excerpted by Dreher. Since my convention is to italicize quotes, I've replaced Hitchens's original italicization with underlining, but the effect may be slightly different for some readers.
*** Both a New York Times review of a gallery retrospective and the table of contents to a book by Michael Edwards imply Mason was fascinated by crowds as a subject for his art. The fascination was shared by at least one friend of his, Georg Eisler, who created several paintings about them including "Hillsborough," about a 1989 stadium panic disaster in Liverpool. posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:34:00 PM -- |    

 
Automatic Travel Complication delays
ATC delays are actually "air traffic control" delays, of course. They wound up costing me a fair of time, money, and aggravation over the last week and a half.

True, I wasn't trapped on a runway for hours without food or adequate toilet facilities like the folks chronicled in yesterday's USA Today editorial. But heading home from Atlanta a week and a half ago at 12:30 AM instead of 8:30 PM makes a difference when you have a 9 year old kid in tow, even when she's a great kid who didn't fuss about it. The upshot was that we were all so beat by the time we got home around 3:30 AM that we spent half of my 2d "day of vacation" recovering from the first one.

And at the other end of my vacation, a second ATC delay left me stranded overnight in Syracuse, my best option being a 6:00 AM flight out the next morning. To that airline's credit (US Airways), I was informed relatively promptly by cell phone, and rebooked at the gate to a new itinerary and more convenient destination. While they didn't put me in a motel, I did get a "distressed traveller" discount. But a Ramada Inn was just not where I wanted to be that night, and schlepping into work yesterday morning with my carry-on luggage also wasn't in my original vision for the trip.

Reading an item about all this on cheapflights. com, I'm told by one Mike Boyd, aviation consultant, that this isn't about "trying to cram too many airplanes into too little airspace":

“We have too little air traffic control infrastructure to efficiently handle the natural demand generated by our economy,” he contends in a recent edition of his Aviation Hot Flash newsletter. Boyd asserts that the FAA “is nowhere near implementing an ATC system that is anywhere near the needs of the transportation system”.

In other words, we're trying to cram too many airplanes into too little airspace. I get how weather and chance can have cascading effects across airports, but it seems to me that, say, European air travel isn't quite this discombobulated, despite the "natural demand generated by their economy."

I don't know whether ATC delays in the U.S. come from relatively more flights, relatively fewer air traffic controllers, inadequate equipment, or what. All I know is this didn't used to happen nearly every time I travel by air, and now it does. So now I apparently need to allow for 4-6 hours of delay for a given air trip on top of the hour or so of "security theater" -- are my toothpaste and sunblock properly separated for inspection in a little plastic bag? do my little girl's shoes contain an explosive device? -- that we have to put up with.

It's enough to make me want to pick a nearby spot for a vacation and do it all by car next time. I'll just need to guesstimate which bridges along the way aren't about to collapse. posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:24:00 PM -- |