Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Let things happen the way nature intended

Hurricane Katrina swept into the central gulf coast and devastated the city of New Orleans. Would you believe that the very existence of this town, The Big Easy, is really nothing more than the legacy of an intrusive, non-Constitutionally mandated federal government agency, who have been messing with Mother Nature for a century and a half in a way that she's never been messed with before?

The story starts after the defeat and conquest of Louisiana by the U.S. Army in 1864, which was preceded by a long occupation of Nar-lens by the same said army. This foreign military power ultimately never left as occupiers and reconstructers and improvers for the poor unenlightened crackers who needed to have "freedom" and "progress" spread their way. Sound familiar?

It has all been wonderfully documented in the WPA Guide to Louisiana (1941), which is still the very best book on the state ever written:

"For two centuries earthen embankments were the only means of flood control. Generally deficient in height and width and never adequately repaired, the levees frequently broke, and the countryside was in constant danger of inundation. After the War Between the States a series of disastrous floods aroused national interest in flood control. The Mississippi River commission was created in 1879, and the task of construction and maintenance of the levee system was assigned to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."

"With the aid of huge Federal appropriations, the State embarked upon a program ensuring protection against a flood stage in excess of that of 1927, when New Orleans was saved only after the levee had been dynamited at Caernavron, below the city."

"Cutoffs straightened the river and provided a more rapid run-off of high water, an outlet channel for Mississippi and Red River flood waters was built in the Atchafalaya Basin, and New Orleans was protected by the construction a short distance above the city of the Bonnet Carre' Spillway."

"Assurance that a great volume of Ohio River floodwater can be discharged safely by the Mississippi through Louisiana was given in 1937."

Yeah says who? Big Brother can control both the Ohio and the Mississippi? Yeah you and what deity?

The fact that people should not be placing sedentary habitations in this particular region in the first place never seems to enter into the discussion. The conquered people have never questioned why their conquerors have gone to such extraordinary lengths to defy one of Mother Nature's most powerful waterways, the Mississippi River, The Father of the Waters. Maybe the concept of control is too tempting for any of them to resist. It is their narcotic of righteous mission, regardless of the real damage they are actually doing to the natural order of things with their stolen funds. Sound familiar?

Simply put New Orleans is an artificial construct of the U.S. federal government, using money stolen in Connecticut, Utah and Iowa to keep the Crescent City of Louisiana from being bowled under by the Big Muddy. It, like Pompeii, should have been allowed to be a great city while it lasted but left to die a natural death. Both cities had placed themselves too near Mother Nature's capricious wrath and ultimately paid the price. It takes nothing away from either town to say that they had their day and then vanished with dignity.

Besides we can always go visit the clean and spotless New Orleans Square in Disneyland. Until, that is, Orange County is ground into dust by the San Andreas Fault.

4 comments:

beamis said...

Where does it say in my blog that any human being is responsible for this hurricane? That is your lunatic mind at work, not mine, because I clearly can't make a stupid statement like that and call myself rational. Human institutions can't cause a hurricane Skeeter, so I don't understand your first charge against me.

As for the rest of it Louisiana and New Orleans do not have the wealth or stamina to hold back the waters that everywhere surrounds them forever, but stolen assets from other regions of the country did, for a while anyway. Today New Orleans is full of dead bodies because an outside force directed from Washington, DC decided to hold back natural forces that should have never been tangled with in the first place. At least not on the scale of what has been undertaken by the Corps of Engineers.

There should be no city the size of New Orleans located some 35 feet BELOW sea level in the middle of the Mississippi delta period! And lo and behold if we scan the earth we find that there is no other city of any size located that far below the level of the ocean. Why do you think that is?

There would be far less dead bodies for me to make my point over if the city had been allowed to go away naturally a century ago.

Instead of being falsely assured by a bunch of federal bureaucrats who used the hard earned wealth of the other 49 states, New Orleans should have died a natural death, or as you say, let the local authorities pay for the needed infrastructure to keep it a going concern. If they rebuild this sewer hole of a city, who is gonna pay for it? Why it'll be you and me Skeeter. Let's throw some of our stolen wealth over the backs of future dead bodies dude!

Also you may want to read the works of Donald Worster, an enviornmental historian, who chronicles the fall of most major ancient civilzations because artifical irrrigation eventually led to severe salinization of the soils, rendering them sterile and eventually causing starvation and decline. The list of fallen empires includes Egpyt, Mesopotamia, the ancient Greeks and now California. "Rivers of Empire" would be a good book to start with.

Peace out.

beamis said...

As for the other areas where the hurricane pounded hardest and the storm surge went inland as much as 9 miles, all I can say is that people make a free will choice about where they live. There are plenty of history books, weather shows and local memories that remind one that hurricnanes are something you you live with when you reside in that particular area. It is no secret that this coastline gets pounded hard by tropical ocean storms. End of discussion.

Now why should someone in Nebraska and Hawaii be forced to have their tax money spent on behalf of any of these people living in the path of a known danger? But, of course, no one will ask if, we who choose to live away from hurricanes, want to aid those, who with full faculties, decided to nest beside a dangerous coastline?

When we had flooding this past winter in southern Utah the federal government granted quite a few millions of dollars in "disaster relief" to this area. I also don't think people in Louisiana or Florida should be stuck for the tab for stupid people who built their garish St. George aluminum siding palace in the path of a known hazard, in this case a steep desert river floodplain. It is all so silly and un-accountably wasteful for such elaborate wealth transfers to be going on about the free-will choices made by individuals concerning where to build their abode or where a town decided to build a bridge.

Why are the feds so involved in my dirt pile?

Anonymous said...

Beamis,

I'm with you. Mosquito Power! Up with bogs! Down with the Julip swilling-titti-flashing-digicam-pivoting-fanny-pack-wearing-fajita-eatin' assholes. Gimme a swamp.


What has civilization done for you lately anyway?

Ivo

Devastatin' Dave said...

I'll quote Blue Oyster Cult. That's right...BOC.

"History shows again and again how Nature points out the folly of men."