The World Lurches Again

It's mind-boggling how quickly our lives change these days. During the past five years, we've experienced events that bring with them seismic societal shifts in what seems like a week's time. The 2000 presidential election crisis. September 11, 2001. The Iraq war. And now, the carnage of Hurricane Katrina.

I was gathering some recycling materials today and found a South Bend Tribune newspaper from August 28. That was seven days ago. I was surprised to discover only a single story about Katrina, on page three. That seems inconceivable now--that the storm was only a single bead in the kaleidoscope of our existence a mere seven days ago. Amazingly, there were more pressing matters: a mother's protest during the president's monthlong vacation, the laborious and contentious Iraqi constitutional debate, and the romantic travails of a fictional 40-year old virgin. By Friday, however, 95 percent of the front page of the New York Times was devoted to the hurricane, complete with a haunting photograph of a dead victim floating in the floodwaters. Above that photo the unfathomable headline "Despair and Lawlessness Grip New Orleans as Thousands Remain Stranded in Squalor." That the images we witness through our televisions easily confirm the outrageous claim of that headline only adds to our sense of overwhelming and disbelief.

So the world shifts yet again. We haven't resolved any of the previous crises but already we're left to ponder where this latest upheaval will take us. By now, however, one can predict three consequences. First, sincere expressions of generosity and acts of compassion will flow abundantly from all corners, and we'll try hard not to congratulate ourselves too much for doing what should be expected. Second, new "celebrities" will emerge. People we didn't know anything about, like New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and FEMA Director Michael Brown will become media fixtures, just as Katherine Harris, Mohammed Atta, and Jessica Lynch bubbled to the surface during past lurchings. And, finally, somehow, we will manage to become more divided. You can already feel it in the air. Public officials' decreasingly subtle positioning on issues of blame and responsibility. The undeniable emergence of race. The sensing of political opportunity within the ruins of tragedy. Paradoxically, compassion, celebrity and division have become the only certainty in chaotic times. That paradox raises a question and an opportunity: Is it possible to lurch toward compassion and away from the other two?

Perhaps hope lies in the depths of our own dismay. One of the recurring sentiments of the past week has been "I cannot believe this is happening in the United States of America." And it is true. The images and language describing the gulf coast's destruction and its peoples' plight are, literally, foreign to us. Words such as "refugee" and "squalor" and "anarchy" are the language of a different world, a "third world" far away. Maybe, now, in Katrina's painful wake, we will finally get it. We will know not just what a refugee is, but remember how one feels, how one lives and dies. We will finally understand, not how lucky our national lives have been, but how unlucky much of the rest of the world always is. And then maybe, after we take care of Biloxi and New Orleans, our eyes will turn to Ethiopia and Bangladesh.

But it's an uphill journey. Our nation embraces a vision of "exceptionalism" that requires an aloof distance from the weaker and less mighty. Notice, already, the refugees have been rechristened "evacuees." Already, the distance is returning.