Message to America

When Dorothy, The Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion and The Scarecrow all entered the giant chamber of the Great and Mighty Oz, they were awestruck by the Being's power and force. He was larger than life, able to command vast plumes of fire and smoke and his face seemed to hang in the air, floating there like a giant apparition. So fully immersed in their own fear were they, that our four heroes were unable to see that they were being duped. It took the fearless little Toto, a non-human, to pull back the curtains and reveal that the Great and Mighty Oz was nothing more than an old and insecure man who relied on illusions to maintain his control over the people.

So it is with our President.

The only difference is that in our real-life version, the non-human that ripped down the curtain of illusion from the Great and Mighty Bush Administration was Hurricane Katrina. In her wake, the entire world witnessed how poorly the federal government responded to the worst natural disaster in American history.

So widespread is the dysfunction of our federal government, that anger and shock have come from some surprising sources: conservatives. Robert Novac, Newt Gingrich, & the editorial staff of The New Hampshire Leader -- one of the most conservative papers in America -- have all been critical of the President and his government's response. Even tsunami victims in Indonesia are stunned that America could so quickly send help to their country but then let its own citizens suffer needlessly and die.

Compare the blindingly incompetent aftermath of Katrina to the September 11th terrorist attacks which resulted in the deaths of 3052 people. Three days later, on September 14th, the President arrived in New York City to visit ground zero. Standing atop the rubble of the twin towers with his arm draped around a firefighter, Bush announced to the world: I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." It took three days for the President to arrive on the scene. His approval rating skyrocketed.

By comparison, on August 29th, Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm. The death toll is nearly at 1,000 and climbing. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt thinks thousands have died. One million were displaced as the entire city of New Orleans lost power, water, transportation. Four days later, President Bush arrived in the city to tour the devastation and have his pictures taken with rescue workers. It took four days for the President to arrive on the scene.

Incredibly, during those four days: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld watched a professional baseball game in San Diego; Vice President Dick Cheney was fishing in Wyoming before returning to Washington to go house hunting; both Department of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff and FEMA Director Michael Brown were unaware that refugees were stranded at the convention center; Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice played tennis with Monica Seles at The U.S. Open and then took in a Broadway show and bought thousands of dollars worth of shoes in NYC.

There is no spin that Karl Rove can orchestrate that will make us forgive the actions of the most important individuals in the President's cabinet; no spin that will make us forget the heart-wrenching images we saw of tens of thousands of people -- modern American refugees -- who were stuck without enough food and water in a 21st century American city. Violence and theft were rampant as humans tried to survive. Children and parents were separated. Some children just died due to heat and lack of nourishment.

There's no justification to explain why - when the President gave his televised speech to America from the French Quarter in New Orleans - the power was turned on just long enough for him to speak before being turned off again; or why every Republican voted, astoundingly, to block the creation of a bi-partisan commission to investigate what went wrong with the federal government's response; or why New Orleans is to be rebuilt by those companies with close ties to the White House.

The curtain has been pulled back and ripped down. The Great and Mighty Bush and his are revealed to be inept, corrupt, ignorant, and, ultimately, just not interested in human life. Not surprisingly, Mr. Bush's approval ratings are the lowest they've ever been. Which is why the Wicked Witch of the East already has a plan in place to shift focus, blame, integrity, and accountability away from those who hold power at the national level.

Wake up, America! Your poppy-induced trance is over. It's time to remember that - just like Dorothy - we've had the tools to fix this situation all along: we're already wearing a set of ruby slippers in the form of voiciferous free speech, demanding government accountability, grassroots activism and yearly elections.

The future of American politics and, indeed, America itself now depends on our willingness to return to basics: respect and care for each other and respect and care for the power of our home - Earth. Let us begin by clicking our heels together three times and intoning the ageless wisdom of our ancestors: "There's no place like home... There's no place like home..."