It may or may not be true that the Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned; but it is certainly true that ex-Governor of Texas George W. Bush strummed on a guitar while Florida sank. Just as he remained passively blinking in confusion in a Florida kindergarten classroom, a primer in his hand, when he was told the Twin Towers in New York had been blasted, so he hesitated to react to the news that New Orleans was being destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Instead, he went to San Diego to pitch a political message about social security. He clowned by miming playing a guitar given to him by country singer Mark Wills.

     According to Newsweek Magazine, September 11 issue, his aides constantly shield him from bad news; they drew lots to determine who among them would give him the news that New Orleans was besieged. Apparently, he does not himself watch or read news.

     Nothing--not the mounting deaths in Iraq in his personal war based on lies--is able to waken this man from his self-absorbed, arrogant, cruel semi-slumber. Since someone--Karl Rove?--did finally manage to get him to assume responsibility for the lapse in emergency response to Hurricane Katrina--in an attempt to regain the pose of concerned leader--doesn't that amount to a confession of guilt? Doesn't such a confession presuppose that a trial will follow? It does, but the democrats in Congress remain eerily silent, cowed, "good Germans" pretending not to see it happening.

     After wading for 18 hours through the waters of the flooded 9th Ward of New Orleans before being rescued by a boat--and as the casualty rate soared--evacuee Walter Favoroth, 49, said of detained rescue efforts: "Every day they waited--every hour--more people died. This is a crime--a crime of the heart."

     "A crime of the heart." That phrase should echo across the country in judgement of a man who managed to squirm his way into the presidency and who is responsible, directly or indirectly, for dual disasters, thousands of lives, in Iraq and in New Orleans.

John Rechy
September 22, 2005
Los Angeles, California

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Original material by John Rechy appears frequently on these pages.