Poison Deviny

Classic Miranda, 2004: “Hey England, Scotland and Wales,” wrote another irate American citizen, “mind your own business. We don’t need weenie-spined Limeys meddling in our presidential election. If it wasn’t for America, you’d all be speaking German. And if America would have had a president, then, of the likes of Kerry, you’d all be goose-stepping around Buckingham Palace!

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—	Pretty sure Truman and Roosevelt were Democrats.

Classic Miranda, 2005: If the journalists of Braddock’s day had been reporting, the story of New Orleans might have been uplifting, giving hope to people made ever more anxious by the fear industries. Excessive cynicism is corrosive, although in this case only the gullible would be so ready to believe guilt-evading local officials and blame bogyman George Bush.

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“Some 7,000 soldiers from the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard are stationed in Iraq. They include more than 3,000 members of the 256th Brigade Combat Team, a unit based in and around New Orleans. Those soldiers, who represent 40% of Mississippi’s and 35% of Louisiana’s regular Guard strength, were forced to watch helplessly from their barracks in Iraq the past few days as the hurricane swept through their neighborhoods and threatened their families. Quite simply, the two states hardest hit by this storm were handicapped from the start by not having enough Guard units and military equipment like trucks, Humvees and helicopters on the ground to handle the crisis.”

“The Times-Picayune of New Orleans published numerous articles during the past two years warning that the city and federal officials weren’t prepared. The newspaper’s articles also revealed that Bush was making huge cuts to an Army Corps of Engineers project meant to shore up the levees and pumping stations that protect Delta residents from the waters of Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi. That project, known as the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, has been in effect since 1995. But spending on it has been reduced substantially since 2000.”

“Earlier this year, Bush, this President who is spending more than $1 billion a week on this mess in Iraq, proposed less than $11 million in new funding for Louisiana’s flood control project. The Army Corps of Engineers wanted at least $62 million. Among the items the White House cut from that flood control budget was money to study how New Orleans could cope with a Category 5 hurricane.”

Classic Miranda, 2003: And yet without introspection we lose much of what makes us human, because we need to know ourselves in order to develop a conscience, a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong. Without the humility that comes from knowledge of yourself and your own failings, everyone else’s behaviour will seem intolerable. You will be consumed with blind self-righteousness. Hence the rise of the busybody, the dobber and the petty tyrant in Sydney and hair-trigger rage from strangers about trifles. Lack of introspection leads people to take on hatreds and dimly understood positions without thinking through what they mean, only that perhaps: “War is bad”, “Bush is stupid” and “Howard is Hitler”. It leads to the ascendance of meaningless street politics in which hordes of what Lenin called “useful idiots” protest against McDonald’s or globalisation or war.

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