corrente

David Rossie is a an editorial writer/columnist for the Press and Sun Bulletin of Binghamton, NY, and if it weren't for "Common Dreams," which continues to pluck his excellent columns to republish on their site, I probably wouldn't know he exists.

I sure am glad I do. He's so much better than Kristof or Cohen, or so many of the other pseudo-liberals our great metropolitan papers have chosen to burden us with. Clear, uncompromising, liberal, with a great eye for what is worthy of ire, and on behalf of what values, Rossie speaks with both clarity and passion, two qualities our beloved republic has never been in greater need of.

This particular piece of writing is so fine, in part, because it points the way from comprehension of our present situation to the kind of action capable of changing it.

Remember the pictures. The bodies floating in the flood waters, the hunger-plagued children, the anguished mothers, the hopeless elderly, the heroic Coast Guard rescue teams. Remember them. Remember them as the city's slow recovery proceeds and the last presidential platitude has mercifully faded away.

Remember that this didn't happen in Haiti or Bangladesh or some other Third World backwater. It happened here. Remember why it happened and who allowed it to get as bad as it got. Remember it when the midterm elections come around a year from November. Keep all of it in mind, because those elections can be, must be, the first step toward reclaiming this once-proud nation's respectability.

The voters of this country made a tragic blunder in 2000 and they compounded it last year, and there is no forcing the genie back into the bottle. But the past does not have to be prologue. If the Democrats can somehow find a voice and an agenda, not to mention a spine, and recapture the House or Senate or both, they can at least slow if not halt the decline of this country toward a social level comparable to that of 17th century England.

The failure of FEMA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, in bringing relief to the stranded inhabitants of New Orleans and the failure of our detached-from-reality president once again to respond to a crisis in a timely manner, were so glaring that even the tame media could not ignore it.

Bush's grandstanding moment with the bullhorn in 2001, and the fact that we had been attacked by external forces bought him 3½ years of slack. But Katrina offered no such theatrical opportunity. Instead, we had to settle for the frat boy telling us how much fun he had in New Orleans before he became an even more carefree president, and how much he was looking forward to sitting on Trent Lott's new front porch.

You can read the rest here.

David Rossie is a good reason for checking in at "Common Dreams" on a regular basis.