Welcome to Waterworld. "It would be a terrible crime to let New Orleans die, or to resurrect it as an exclusive playground for the prosperous." (Photo: Reuters/Allen Frederickson)

by Ross Levine 

In the muck-laden, corpse-strewn wake of Hurricane Katrina, there has been talk of kissing New Orleans goodbye. Describing the city as a romantic fantasy covering up a morass of poverty, failure and corruption, various politicians, experts and pundits have joined a chorus declaring the city "it's about time" dead. Pulling out ancient maps that demonstrate the whole place was built upon a swamp anyway, they maintain that the city has no right to be where it is, and that the American taxpayers should not be billed another penny for shoring up its levees or oiling its pumps.

But theirs is not only a geographical rationale. They point to the Crescent City 's over-the-national average poverty rate, the fact that its mostly African-American citizens attend wretched schools, that the police force is so corrupt most New Orleaneans will never call them, and that your average resident is so poor that a trip to Baton Rouge is considered a once-in-a-lifetime excursion. And they say that, as the southeast Louisiana diaspora spreads to the Midwest, Southwest and Northeast, the people of New Orleans are getting a glimpse of life beyond the city limits -- and have no intention of ever going "home" to the Big Easy.

This economic reasoning continues with the notion that those of us who live in "safe" areas should not subsidize the wellbeing of those who do not. Needless to say, with New Orleans gone, quake-prone California is next on the list. And perhaps New York City, having well demonstrated its vulnerability to terrorist attacks. We seem to recall a nail-biter in St. Louis some years back, when there was concern that the Mississippi River might wash through the Gateway Arch. And Tornado Alley -- must be a metropolis or two out there that might be better off elsewhere. Wasn't there a heat wave in Chicago that wiped out a bunch of folks? Or was it a blizzard? And didn't someone just prove that the Seattle area has been hit in the past by a monstrous tsunami? And speaking of hurricanes -- goodbye Miami, Charleston, Savannah and -- for that matter -- Newport , Rhode Island .

Of course, yes, there is a question of how much disaster relief is enough. There has to be limits, unless you plan to hand every poor Katrina flood victim the life that Barbara Bush is accustomed to. But if you take this argument far enough, you may arrive at a society (perhaps the one some Republicans are hoping for) where everyone is basically on their own -- back to the 19th century and beyond, when you had a few wealthy feudal lords and the rest of us were just serfs fending for ourselves. The human race, after all, has survived the Black Plague and a lot of other nasty things, so we probably don't have to worry that the drowning of New Orleans spells the beginning of the end of our kind. But the fact is, the government has to respond to a disaster or get into the mode of deciding who lives and who dies -- who gets help and who doesn't. And the dilemma of how much help is now a 50-billion-dollar-plus question: Is New Orleans worth it?

Yes it is.

For one thing, we've put quite a bit more than 50 billion into shoring up the infrastructure of Iraq, which last I heard was a place even more foreign to us than Louisiana. We don't recall anyone in the administration asking: If the people of Iraq live in a land that is prone to dictators, who are we to come in and de-dictatorize them? Whether one believes the Iraq war was for oil or democracy, both lead back to the theme of national security -- are we missing something or doesn't national security have something to do with the security of people living here in the United States? For the past four years, we've seen any number of plans and suggestions for erecting even taller buildings on the World Trade Center site, buildings that will surely attract the attention of terrorists once again. Yet when it comes to rebuilding the levees of New Orleans, well, we'll have to think about that one.

Because secondly, we're wondering just how important New Orleans is to us. When cotton and slavery were kings, she was guardian of a major port, and her capture by the Union during the Civil War helped seal the fate of the South. But the ways of the world have left her today with tourism the main industry, and what tourist attraction could be worth the money it will now take to clean her up and make her presentable again? That said, we might think of it a little differently, and add New Orleans to the endangered species list. If we believe in saving gnatcatchers because we're trying to preserve the diversity of life, then shouldn't we rescue New Orleans, one of the most distinctive places in the United States? Cities, after all, are more than ports and financial centers. They have their own unique auras, dialects and specialties; they enrich a nation in the way art enriches a culture, not so much for economic reasons, but for all the other reasons that tend to be "dismissed" -- literally and figuratively -- in budget-trimming sessions where the first things to go are nonessentials like the nursing home victims being fished from the toxic water every day.

But billions upon billions to resurrect a romantic fantasy? New Orleans is not the French Quarter, we're told, or the charming Garden District, the streetcar named Desire, the moss-hung live oaks and jumbalaya. It's a city of inescapable poverty, lawlessness and corruption. The schools have failed, the infrastructure is crumbling, and racism permeates the place like the horrid smells now percolating up from the floodwaters. It's a Sodom and Gomorrah ripe for annihilation, and good riddance -- no need to look back and turn to salt, but if you do, you'll see the ultimate in urban renewal: The destruction of an entire American city and the scattering of its citizens across the country like, yes, refugees from another failed U.S. "foreign" intervention.

Perhaps this New Orleans-aphobia is just an outgrowth of our disinclination toward the French of late, since after all, the city was once part of that "Old European" empire. But what sizeable American city can we hold up as an acceptable model of successful public education, limited crime, equal opportunity, across-the-board prosperity, well maintained infrastructure, adequate services and all the rest? Eyes are turning toward California now, as the federal government tries to perhaps prepare the tremulous Golden State for a disaster response that will make the Katrina debacle look like a textbook exercise in efficiency and humanity. If you wonder why people are living below sea level with schools that suck, no health care, an abundance of murder and environmental degradation, ingrained racism, rampant corruption and crumbling infrastructure, you should also wonder why people are living on earthquake faults with all of the above. If California decides to shake herself free of the mainland and drift into the sea, the New York Post headline may read: Bush to L.A. and S.F.: Aloha!

The real question here is not whether or not New Orleans is worth saving, but ultimately, if the United States is worth saving. Every one of our cities is suffering from the ills listed in the paragraph above, and no city is ever completely free from the wrath of Mother Nature or our own incurable stupidity. The question we should be asking is what are our priorities in this country, especially now when the Republican-controlled government (executive, legislative and alas, soon judicial) has been steadily chipping away at whatever inroads social welfare had made into the American capitalist scheme. Privatize social security, cut taxes for the wealthy, give polluters more and more leeway, foster greed over corporate responsibility -- this is the agenda currently in play, and one that dwarfs any debate over whether or not to bring New Orleans back from the dead. If the powers that be have their way, the entire city may be transformed into a bayou Disneyland, a tourist attraction without the social "problems," i.e., without those people who have failed to get their hands on a decent piece of the American dream. Obviously, these are people who don't deserve to have their homeland back.

It would be a terrible crime to let New Orleans die, or to resurrect it as an exclusive playground for the prosperous. It would prove more of a death knell for American civilization than even the likes of Osama bin Laden knocking at our gates. If New Orleans can go, which part of the country is next? Who gets saved and who doesn't? Where do we spend the wealth of this nation? On helping people who needed help all along -- even before the hurricane flushed out their woes for all to see -- or in fostering a divide between rich and poor that threatens us with much worse than hurricanes and earthquakes. At this juncture in time, it's the enemy within that should concern us most.

13 September 05

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