A Confederacy Of Dunces.

"Oh, Fortuna, blind, heedless goddess, I am strapped to your wheel. Do not crush me beneath your spokes. Raise me on high, divinity."

-Ignatius J. Reilly, speaking to his mocking muse in one of my all-time favorite books, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

Ignatius, a 30-year old flatulent behemoth, self-proclaimed genius and one of the most lively characters ever to appear in print, is the focus of Toole's novel. He makes his way out from his bedroom, in which he is at work on a grand work of literature and philosophy while dallying in onanistic diversions, through the neighborhoods of New Orleans, taking a series of dead-end jobs and getting into numerous hilarious and painful situations.

Ignatius sees in Fortuna's wheel the workings of a vulgar fate set against his intellect and bankrupt in charity.

There is now a new confederacy of dunces arrayed against the traumatized inhabitants of a destroyed American city. Government officials insist that the situation is under control while a split screen view of fires raging and thousands spilling out of the Superdome to catch some quasi-fresh air demonstrates that things are most definitely not under control.

The feeble initial response from DHS and state and local agencies is certainly being studied by those parties who might have dreamed of bombing levees in order to wreak destruction, only to be rewarded for their patience by a neutral power. It had been assumed that there were plans for dealing with a disaster of this magnitude. We were wrong. Instead, there is a collective shrug while the citizenry grows nervous that for all the billions handed out since September 11 so far not a dollar has been spent on buying a smarter government.

The clatch of partisan critics adds nothing to the relief operations save the sadly predictable and mildly entertaining claims that help was held back because the president wishes not to waste resources on a city that voted overwhelmingly for Kerry. Next thing we'll hear is that Dick Cheney ordered a shadowy group of Army Corps of Engineers to steal into the Big Easy and mine the levees while evacuation operations were diverting attention.

Not to be outdone, a candidate for the Pat Robertson Humanitarian/Religious Cretin of the Year Award, gets the message from God that New Orleans was destroyed because He just couldn't take one more year of drunken homosexuals. So we now have competing theories as to which deity we can put into the dock, Jehovah or the Great and All-powerful Dick.

Then there are those for whom everything reverts to Iraq. Somehow, the theory goes, the Iraq war has sucked every last Guardsman and Soldier from our soil even as we watch Coast Guard helicopter teams picking stranded residents one-by-one from their roof tops. So the idea is that this is the opportunity to prove how wrong the war was. Throw away all the other arguments and ignore the reasonable proposal that enough money is buried in bloated spending bills to rebuild New Orleans and the whole of the Gulf Coast.

The media, of course, is doing its thing by airing tape loops of the same looting scenes and blaring what amounts to rumors of atrocities. Leave it to Harry Connick, Jr. to walk into the Superdome and declare the vast majority of refugees human. To be fair, the media has done something of a service by demonstrating that it isn't actually impossible to get people into the city while it takes Congress days to convene. And the president, strummin' on a gee-tar might as well have had a shotgun in his hand with which to take out a foot.

There is for each of us either a certain irritation or relief that Iraq has moved to at least second on the news hit parade, which will bring it own howls of conspiracy and manipulation. I say let's leave the slander for those who wish to fixate on the reason for Katrina's swift work of two centuries worth of history and art. That would serve to occupy those prone to dunce-hood while the more literal minded set about to wrest Atlantis from Fortuna's grasp.

Comments

[SurferDude]

Incidents have been reported of civilians taking it upon themselves to organize minor flat bed convoys of supplies for New Orleans. Believe it or not, reports are they were stopped at the border by FEMA and the Guard. Some one should pay dearly for those orders...