Read the first paragraph extracted up there and just couldn't read anymore. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm not an across-the-board conservative, moderate, or liberal. I'm not a feminist or a womanist. Out of all the world's ‘ist’s and ‘ism’s and subcategories, the only label I willingly, and gladly, accept is humanist—cut from the same cloth as other "make/spread love, not war" types.

Somewhere between laid-back Jimmy Buffet, "love them anyway" Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and Pope Jean Paul II, there's me.

That said, add capitalist to the "not" column up there because it's horribly incongruent with the first major tenet that I believe in: and that's that people come before all else.

The reason I stopped reading the article is because my anger started to shoot through the roof: It's totally illogical to me that we can open the vaults after a plane slams into a building, after a quake threatens to split a state into two, or after a hurricane pummels a city, but we can't pry it open (and better people's lives) on disaster-free days when the sun's shining and the skies are blue. To my eyes and ears, accepting that status quo is the equivalent of accepting that 2 + 2 = 5. It just doesn't make sense and my mind doesn't/won't accept it.

It's not that the money's not there: Given the staggering sum of disaster-relief dollars that magically materialize after a catastrophic event, there's a slush fund or a money tree somewhere. If we've got $100 billion post-catastrophe, we've got $100 billion prior to one.

It's the same way I question why it is that we can, illogically, finance an inmate's degree yet deny that same all-expenses-paid scholarship to those on the outside who've stayed on the right side of the law.

That same $100 billion could've been used to shore-up levees and refurbish underprivileged gulf coast schools and neighborhoods long before Katrina entered the picture. But Katrina's small-school thinking.

Be it a tornado in Kansas, a hurricane in Florida, a quake in California, or a levee-breach in New Orleans, I've always wondered where the clean-up/rebuild funds come from. What line item in the expense column...what piggy-bank...are they raiding? $350 million for post-tsunami aid in Asia. where did that come from? $100 billion for New Orleans? Where did that come from?

My point is not to slam crisis-relief efforts but to ask why—if funds can arbitrarily be voted on, approved, and appropriated, on a moment's notice in the face of disaster—they're not voted on, approved and appropriated when the daily headlines are screaming that more and more people are living paycheck to paycheck and slipping deeper and deeper into poverty.

Capitalism's nothing more than a caste system and poverty, and all its ripples, an underscore. We LET people go without. We LET people live in poverty. We LET people die. We limit worldviews instead of expanding them.

It's not a Black issue. It's not a White issue. It's an issue of the "haves" opting to reward death and destruction instead of life. And we, the people, LET them.

That mouthful said, am I saying that, with or without catastrophic events, race is not an ongoing issue in this country? No. Am I absolving George Bush of gross negligence? No...pigs will fly first. Am I absolving all those at other levels who failed? No. Am I saying that race had nothing to do with sluggish recovery efforts? No. All of those things are true if you're looking at the small picture but if you zoom out and view the bigger picture, George Bush is a symptom of a much larger problem.

As an American, and as an African-American, "Impeachment!" was my first reaction to last week's events but, honestly, that's just a band-aid approach. It might save us from three more years of immediate incompetence but what about the inevitable future clones cast from Bush's mold?

Impeachment's like having a major toothache, yet taking aspirin day after day instead of facing the dentist's chair and drill.

Republican. Democrat. Federal. State. Local. The system is broken and bankrupt and it requires more than a band-aid to heal it. What it needs now...what it's needed for a long time...is a major overhaul. Not just a "talking head" change but a mutiny on the bounty: throw out the Constitution, throw out every branch and level of government as we know them—and start again from scratch.

You don't rent an apartment, buy a house, or drive a car and NEVER make repairs (major or minor). Yet that's the way this country/government runs. We're working off of a document that was drafted centuries ago.

If the world has a Drama Queen, the United States wears the winning sash and tiara. And the worst part is, most of the wounds are self-inflicted. Switzerland, Norway, Greenland, Canada—the nations that rarely make the headlines. Granted, they're by no means perfect, but what are they doing right that we're doing wrong? Why can't we learn from those who've at least got it halfway right?

Capitalism is dividing us—and killing us—in more ways than one. It's a foolish thing. Yet, as the Titanic sinks deeper and deeper into the sea, the band plays on and the passengers continue their dance.

It's way past time for the American public to throw another Boston Tea Party and take this country back. 

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Mary Meekins, currently residing in Maryland, is a publishing phenomenon (in her own mind, anyway!). Actually, she's an inquisitive student of the universe, an "accidental novelist," and a freelance writer. As well as a novel-in-progress, she writes essays and short stories for various blogs, magazines,
and other publications.

posted 9 September 2005