How Could This Happen?
Revolution #015, September 25, 2005, posted at revcom.us
A Revolution correspondent submitted this report based on interviews and observations made in Louisiana.
We talked to a young white woman student from L.S.U. who had been helping people in Baton Rouge since the storm first hit. She told us: “This is Bush country, and it’s religious country. Religion gets into everything around here. The middle class people here think anything can be dealt with by praying and relying on god. But they can’t understand how the government knew about this in advance but did nothing about it. It all could have been avoided, and government let people down at every step. Now there’s total chaos, and people are praying a lot but having a hard time finding an explanation.”
Fundamentalist Christian preachers, from extremely powerful and influential Christian Fascist leaders to storefront preachers, are injecting themselves into this situation with an ugly and vicious theory: It had been “God’s will” to destroy New Orleans.
George Smock, who runs the Campus Ministries in Columbia, Missouri, said
“This city, New Orleans, is home to Mardi Gras and other depravity. This week they were supposed to have a ’week of decadence.’ But not anymore. Its very likely they won’t be having Mardi Gras in February or March or whenever. In a part of Mississippi there’s a bunch of riverboat casinos; they got wiped out. So again, I think this came about as the result of the wrath of God.”
Hal Lindsey, one of the best-selling authors of “End Times” theories, said on his September 9th show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network:
“It seems clear that the prophetic times I have been expecting for decades have finally arrived. And even worse, it appears that the judgment of America has begun.”
Charles Colson, an advisor to Richard Nixon who went to prison for the Watergate coverup, said on his Breakpoint Christian radio broadcast:
“One lesson I learned from Katrina is that we better win the war on terror and resolve to prevent another 9/11.... ’Did God have anything to do with Katrina?’ people ask. My answer is, he allowed it. And perhaps he allowed it to get our attention so that we don’t delude ourselves into thinking that all we have to do is put things back the way they were and life will be normal again.”
This hurricane was the product of natural processes—where the warmth of the sun generates storms and winds of great force in the atmosphere. The disaster that followed was the product of man-made processes and errors, as many people were trapped without food, water or the means to escape.
But these Christian fascists deny all this in vicious and crudely anti-scientific ways. They blame the death and suffering on the people themselves—accusing them of “sin” and of tolerating “sin.” And they go even further, claiming that unless the U.S. undergoes major political and social changes (toward a theocratic religious dictatorship) the people will face even more massive suffering and disasters (all thanks to the wrath of their god).