I've been reading the op-ed columns from the Times most popular e-mail list, which is one of the most valuable tools on the internet.
All of the recent columns are good. Krugman. Dowd. Rich. All hit some of the main themes of the past week. The hidden underclass was exposed. There were graven inequities of this disaster. There was a failure of leadership at all three levels of government. And I, who have been full of righteous anger for a week, found good company.
But, you know, I liked Brooks's column the best. He's talking about the long term ramifications of Katrina's relief effort.
Brooks reverses his position from his column a couple of weeks ago, which spoke of a new era of virtue. Now Brooks writes:
The scrapbook of history accords but a few pages to each decade, and it is already clear that the pages devoted to this one will be grisly. There will be pictures of bodies falling from the twin towers, beheaded kidnapping victims in Iraq and corpses still floating in the waterways of New Orleans five days after the disaster that caused them.
It's already clear this will be known as the grueling decade, the Hobbesian decade. Americans have had to acknowledge dark realities that it is not in our nature to readily acknowledge: the thin veneer of civilization, the elemental violence in human nature, the lurking ferocity of the environment, the limitations on what we can plan and know, the cumbersome reactions of bureaucracies, the uncertain progress good makes over evil.
As a result, it is beginning to feel a bit like the 1970's, another decade in which people lost faith in their institutions and lost a sense of confidence about the future.
Ya gotta admire a guy who can do a 180 that swiftly. And then he says what I've been saying around here. Big changes are going to happen.
Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.
Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and feebleness of the 1970's. Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence. Maybe we are entering an age of hardheaded law and order. (Rudy Giuliani, an unlikely G.O.P. nominee a few months ago, could now win in a walk.) Maybe there will be call for McCainist patriotism and nonpartisan independence. All we can be sure of is that the political culture is about to undergo some big change.
We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.
Yeah, things are going to change big time. First of all, who can seriously talk about small government now? These events demonstrate the vital necessity of governmental services to protect the public, to plan for the future, and to care for the needy. Libertarianism has been dealt a serious blow.
Secondly, many people are apparently surprised that there were a lot of poor people in New Orleans. I'm not really sure how this could have been such a shocker, but it apparently it was. Never before have middle class Americans watched seven days of poor, black people on television. I was worried needlessly about Americans generosity. Houston and other cities have opened up their towns to the displaced and opened their minds to the fact that not everybody has a job, a home, or car. Perhaps this will lead to more consciousness of the poor in their own backyard.
Thirdly, I can't find a Bush supporter in the house. When the FOX newscasters are surly, things are bad. There is so much anger about Katrina and the on-going war, Republicans are going to have hard time getting elected to dog catcher.
Fourth, the peace movement just got a shot in the arm. One of the major accusations of the relief effort was that troops couldn’t be sent in to Jefferson Parish, because they were in Falluja. The war just ended.
Fourth, there is going to be a lot of rebuilding going on. Not just in New Orleans, but in Washington. Institutions and levees are going to torn down and rebuilt.
I have to believe that these changes might really bring about Brooks' Age of Virtue.