A sadness

I should be working. I have a file open in front of me that I'm writing, but my mind keeps flipping to different pages. I can't stop thinking about what has happened down in New Orleans and Mississippi. I feel like the world and the country I grew up in has changed. It isn't the same and a line has been crossed that can't be uncrossed. As a kid I traveled all over the south. Every year my father would take us down to Alabama to visit his relatives in Jasper. It was a form of punishment in our eyes and as we grew older and developed wills of our own, the idea of spending a hot summer surrounded by dogs in heat and my aunt yelling across the yard every few minutes just did not appeal. Though I wasn't a big fan of the south, it is part of my blood. My cousins and kin folk all live down there though I anticipate never going back there ever again.

Once my father took us down to New Orleans for the World's Fair. Being a hot, sweaty, fat preteen, I hated the trip. I thought everyone moved slow and was beneath my Northern ways of living. After all, I was from Ohio. The food was excellent and every opportunity to eat some of those fried donuts was taken.
When I was in the Navy, I spent New Year's Eve walking around with a bunch of other sailors from the photography school. We drank huge beers, threw up on the streets of the city, and crashed in a hotel room off of Bourbon Street.
These are the memories I had. I now only see the sadness and pain from the faces of the people of New Orleans. I'm disgusted with George W. Bush. I'm disgusted with people who support him. I'm disgusted with Donald Rumsfeld and all the other bastards just like him. Dick Cheney has been awfully quiet in the past few days. Are they afraid he'll open his mouth and stick his foot in. If this were a suburb of Illinois or an upper-middle class neighborhood, would this have happened? Hell no. Anyone who says anything about not being ready is totally full of shit. I think they were just watching and waiting. Maybe trying to weed out some of the people they considered undesirable. Would they be doing anything if the world weren't so connected and TV cameras weren't recording any of this? If this had been fifty years ago, would they even be in their right now? Thirty? Twenty?
I'd better get back to work.
I have a bad taste in my mouth and no amount of gum can get rid of it.