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The evidence Bush's indifference to New Orleans was an intentional expression of policy becomes conclusive when it is examined from the perspective of class-struggle. What occurred in New Orleans -- what is occurring there now -- is methodically deliberate genocide-by-neglect: the extermination of the poor, and the extermination of one of the South's few Democratic Party strongholds as well.
To understand the present-day implications of class-struggle, you have to know something of the history of capitalism. The Russian Revolution of 1917 terrified capitalism into assuming a humanitarian guise; the New Deal in the United States and the welfare states of Europe were among the results. Meanwhile, even given the tyrannies of Stalinism, capitalism's terror of socialism remained overwhelming: the mere notion of workers demanding economic democracy was infinitely disturbing to the oligarchy; the possibility the formidable Red Army and the peerless Soviet intelligence apparatus might actually enforce that demand evoked bottomless horror in boardrooms around the world. But then the Soviet Union collapsed; the fear-factor that had restrained the oligarchy was lifted, and the capitalists were suddenly again free to run amok at their Tyrannosauric worst -- exactly as they had done before 1917. In Europe and elsewhere, this unleashed an ongoing campaign of relentless attacks on the welfare state. In America, the target was the New Deal, and the attack culminated in the presidency of George Bush -- a man carefully groomed by the global oligarchy to restore capitalism to all of its innate savagery -- maximum profits, maximum concentration of wealth and maximum oppression of all of us who have to work for a living. The one great and potentially liberating irony in all this is that by its savagery, the oligarchy has re-animated its one true enemy: Marx and Marxism is suddenly again not only as relevant as it was in 1917, but -- with the addition of American principles of constitutional governance -- it is now more relevant than ever.
Applying the objective analysis that becomes possible when we recognize the historical reality of class-struggle, we see clearly how everything Bush does serves the oligarchy's purpose. This is true in the Middle East (the imposition of theocracy in Iraq, and the reliable suppression of the people thereby); it is true in the U.S. (outsourcing, downsizing, reduction of wages, looting of pensions, destruction of the social safety net -- all this viciously worsened by skyrocketing prices); and it was never more vividly true than in New Orleans (slashing funds for levee improvement and disaster relief; withholding aid until the aftermath of Katrina inflicted a maximum death toll; blaming the victims for their own plight; denouncing the survival-struggles of the victims as "looting"; using "looting and unrest" as an excuse to further withhold aid; and thereby maliciously raising the death toll even higher). Viewed in this context, the atrocities committed in New Orleans are merely a logical expression of the class war Bush is waging against all of us -- a class war that in New Orleans has been raised to the next deadly level -- as if to numb us in preparation for much worse to come.
Why New Orleans? Demographics explain succinctly: the city is 67 percent black; it voted 77 percent for Kerry/Edwards and is one of the few Democratic strongholds in the entire South; 27 percent of its residents are officially impoverished -- making it one of the largest concentrations of urban poverty in the U.S. By the tactic of genocide-by-neglect, not only did Bush serve the Rove/Norquist/Republican purpose of destroying a Democratic stronghold (thereby altering forever the politics of the nation by guaranteeing Louisiana will become a wholly Republican, wholly Christofascist state). Bush also served the oligarchic purpose of ending poverty by death: remember that every dead Social Security recipient, every dead welfare recipient, every dead disabled person is a bonus for the oligarchy -- that much less money for social services, that much more money available for the concentration of wealth.
And then of course there is the object lesson the horror of New Orleans provides. All but the most dim-witted recognize that in Katrina and its aftermath we are seeing the true future of America. People dying in the streets while the powers that be manipulate relief efforts for maximum propaganda impact -- disaster as a Rove/Norquist/Goebbels photo-op. America of the New World Order: a tiny, arrogant and obscenely comfortable oligarchy ruling over the rest of us -- all of us increasingly desperate, increasingly frightened, increasingly oppressed, all of us kept in line by hard-eyed men riding armored cars and brandishing automatic rifles.
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