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HURRICANE KATRINA:
ONE YEAR LATER
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I have not been to New Orleans since Katrina, but last December I made
a pilgrimage to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The images of
destruction stick in my mind: a casino ballroom in ruins except
for its disco ball; concrete steps leading nowhere; groves of ancient
trees torn to splinters. Much more troubling were messages
spray-painted on the shells of buildings: "You loot, we shoot."
A year ago, I wrote an essay titled "
American Leviathan," which
contained a big, conceptual mistake. It was corrected, as you will
see, by gentle feedback from Julianne Werlin. I offer this revision of that essay, not just to correct my misconception, but also
to reframe my original opinion about what happened to America and the news
media one year ago.
Then, the headline in the
St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times
described New Orleans as a city "At the Edge of Anarchy." The stories
and images of suffering, starvation, displacement and violence were too
gruesome to believe. Then came the looters. Some were after baby food,
diapers, water, clothing, toilet paper. Others boosted television sets,
designer clothes and jewelry.
Chaos had come again.
Expressions of outrage followed. A reader named John F. Marretta offered this opinion
to the letters page of the
St. Pete Times:
It figures the scum
of the earth would be out looting in hurricane-devastated areas. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for stealing from somebody's
business if you are taking food and water. But if you are
stealing designer clothing, jewelry or electronics you have no place in
society. Police would have my full support if they were to shoot
looters on sight. These types of human filth have no place among the
civilized members of society.
At least Mr. Marretta was willing to distinguish between survival and
criminality. When Diane Sawyer suggested that distinction to the
President of the United States, he responded stoically that the police
policy for those who break the law should be "
zero tolerance."
As I digested all of this, I wondered why, as a culture, we lacked the same deep emotional
response to the price gougers and profit mongers? When the
corporate CEOs rape and pillage the retirement funds of aging
pensioners, we may want them in the slammer. But we don't line up
the firing squad at the bottom of the courthouse steps when they
descend wearing their thousand-dollar suits.
Something very deep and very dark was going on in our response to what happened in New
Orleans last year, made worse, we now know, by widespread rumors of snipers,
roving gangs, rapes and murders -- a complete disintegration of the
social order. To understand the ancient well of our pessimism, I
suggested a return to the work of a 17th-century English philosopher
named
Thomas Hobbes, the author of a famous book called "
Leviathan."
First published during the
English civil war in 1651, Leviathan offers
a bleak view of human nature, one best described by this famous
passage:
Whatsoever ... is consequent to a time of war, where every
man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein
men live without other security than what their own strength and their
own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there
is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation nor use of the
commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no
instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force;
no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no
letters; no society; and, which is worst of all, continual fear and
danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short.
For Hobbes there was no altruism, no state of grace -- only the state of
nature, where individuals struggled for survival. Together they
formed a monstrous creature, a giant beast -- New Orleans after Katrina
(my view then). The churches or religion could not help, Hobbes
argued, only a powerful political entity, a form of government that
could enforce -- by force -- the social contract that kept us from each
other's throats.
Part of my mistake was that I had misnamed these creatures. Here
is Julianne Werlin's polite critique:
I just wanted to point out
that there seems to be a misconception running throughout your article
and indeed in its very title. The word Leviathan within Thomas
Hobbes' political philosophy refers to the state itself, "that mortal
god." The concept you mean to reference, the state of nature, is
referred to as Behemoth within the book by that title. New
Orleans might, therefore, be the American Behemoth, but it is certainly
not the American Leviathan.
Hobbes derived both words,
Behemoth and
Leviathan,
from Biblical
stories about great beasts of earth and water who would fight the great
battle at the end of the world. A year ago, that struggle seemed
foreshadowed by the devastation of Katrina.
Greater than storms and earthquakes are our fears that civilization is a
thin tissue covering a pit of snakes. Our collective terror of
violence, of strangers, of the poor, of the dispossessed with dark
skins, provoke our "fight or flight" response. Shoot to kill. Zero tolerance. What do you expect?
I argued that all this has profound implications for the news
media. I called not for self-censorship, but for a deeper, richer
and more nuanced rendering of the news. Here was my advice to
journalists, followed by my current point of view:
1.) As we cover this crisis, we should continue to
distinguish different layers of culpability, from stealing for family
on one end to rape and murder on the other. [It turned out that reports
of mayhem too often turned out to be distorted or exaggerated. In
retrospect, many, many people in trouble lent help to each other across
boundaries of age and race.]
2.) Remember that the social contract in a democracy
requires the government to keep the peace and protect the people. This provides us with an opportunity for watchdog journalism -- to hold
the powerful accountable for their accomplishments and failures. [We
now know that some of the best journalism came from journalists who
made it onto the scene, braved the conditions, saw the suffering up
close, and recognized that the city, the state, the federal government
(in short, the Leviathan) had failed to uphold its part of the bargain.
We should continue to investigate what went wrong and how to fix it.]
3.) The hidden divisions in America of race and class
are now fully visible. Most of us who deliver the news or receive
it have no idea what it means to be poor in a big city, to lack the
transportation, money or knowledge to avoid the monster from the
sea. It's time to re-dedicate ourselves to telling the untold
stories of the poor, and to creating a picture of the here and now that
leads to justice and not recrimination. [I give credit to the
journalists who have not let us forget the lessons of Katrina. Sadly, in an age where so much coverage is exhausted on celebrity news
and the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, we lack the will to cover issues of
poverty in a way that might make a difference.]
4.) It's become too easy in this crisis to depict
African-Americans as either the purveyors or victims of violence. In fact, black Americans will play out all the dramatic roles that make
this story so vivid: not just criminal or victim, but protector,
parent, child, law-enforcer, politician, soldier, reporter,
friend. Our job is to capture all these roles to tell the fullest
and fairest story. [Still looks good to me.]
I wrote last year that Thomas Hobbes would look at the feel-good stories of the 21st century
with a cynical eye, and he would be right to criticize the ease with
which journalists declare the heroism or generosity of Americans. I argued that heroism and generosity are out there, shrouded
by desperation, inattention and need.
The Hobbesean vision of the world resided deeply in the early coverage
of the American Behemoth. In retrospect, it was the American Leviathan
that betrayed the trust. We must continue to look for ways to
create coverage that helps restore the social contract between citizen
and citizen, and between governments and those they
serve.
