Political Danger Of Katrina Fatigue
Political Danger Of Katrina Fatigue
Most Americans find it is emotionally very difficult to have serious pro-long political discussions about New Orleans. Many said its because the unprocessed personal trauma still is too emotionally raw and painful to them.
Other political at risk Americans fear the long reach of the Bush-Cheney Oval office police state.
The feelings of helpless and being emotionally overwhelmed are the common feelings reported. Large segments of Americans have withdrawn from the whole Katrina affair and are acting like good Germans during WWII. The American population is emotionally hard pressed to deal with the going sense of helplessness and depression about New Orleans.
Americans are start to emotionally experience the deepening political crisis in New Orleans like the massive Asia trade deficit, i.e. massive, growing and hopeless.
God cruse
Mayor C. Ray Nagin suggested that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that “God is mad an America” and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting. “Surely God is mad at America,” said Mr. Nagin, He (God) sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it’s destroyed and put street on this country.” In the face of federal bankruptcy and Congressional rejection of a 250 billion dollar New Orleans redevelopment proposal and massive and surging Chinese trade, Mr. Nagin also promised that New Orleans would be a “chocolate” city again. “This city will be majority African –American city…It’s the way God wants it to be, You can’t have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn’t be New Orleans”.
This type of obvious political lunacy four months after Katrina still received a platform in the New York Times and other respected American newspapers because of the degree of political disorientation of critical segments of American political culture as a direct consequence of Katrina fatigue.
Politicians like mayor C. Ray Nagin and the Oval office, multinationals and other elements within American political culture are fully aware of the consequences of Katrina fatigue and are taking advantage of the fact most Americans are still to emotionally overwhelmed, impaired and cognitively disorientated by the stock and awe of the flooding of New Orleans. Most Americans are shocked to learn that New Orleans current population is less than 65,000.
The human tragedy that followed the flooding of the city New Orleans was beyond any internal emotional reference experience of the American people. The devastation in New Orleans has no historical or emotional reference point for the mass of American people.
Most Americans are still so emotionally overwhelmed by the horrific events in New Orleans they are unconsciously apartmentializing or emotionally shutting down in order not to deal with their deeper fears.
For many other Americans already mentally at risk who have either come from other crisis regions of the world or live in the inner city war zones, report that New Orleans has retrigger deep past traumas (i.e. flashback from the past).
The Oval office’s shocking and ruthless forced depopulation and downsizing of the city of New Orleans has created a particularly emotional limbo and trauma for most Americans because of its stark emotional contrast to the aggressive national campaign to rebuild and regenerate of the New York region that took place after 9/11.
No American city has ever been depopulated of 85 percent of its population by armed federal troopers in less than a week and then not allowed return.
National sense of collective shame
There is a misplaced national sense of collective shame about the genocide-taking place in New Orleans. Watching what is happening to the hundred of thousands of poor suffering Black African Americans being driven away from New Orleans increasing is taking on the same collective helplessness as watching the oppressed people of Darfur, Sudan.
White Americans and increasing numbers of Black Americans emotionally wants the New Orleans nightmare and shame to go away or disappear from the daily news reporting. Like the reporting of Darfur, Sudan, most mainstream new papers are selectively covering New Orleans, no longer in a separate daily section.
These stories are now hidden in the rear of the paper. Personal tragedy has replace political analysis. The 500,000 internally displaced Americans running out money in the die of winter hundred of miles away from New Orleans, is no longer front page news.
Increasing numbers of Americans Black and white are also reporting being re-traumatized every time they see, hear or read updates on the on going crisis in New Orleans and the struggle of the suffering people New Orleanains trying to piece their lives back together.
Before the term Katrina fatigue was intervened in Washington, University of Maryland journalism professor Susan Moeller and other warned the national of the emotional consequence of “compassion fatigue”, a condition that sets in when people believe a tragedy is beyond their control.
In the case of New Orleans, compassion fatigue would describe the emotional condition helplessly watching of the forced downsizing and depopulate of over 400, 000 people from the city of New Orleans.
Compassion fatigue vs. Katrina fatigue
Professor Moeller suggested that stories about crisis are more emotionally digestible when people are empowered to help, an experts on media’s coverage of conflict and disasters.
Using Professor Moeller analytical model: 9/11 was very digestible because everything possible was done to saved life and rebuild families and the city of New York. There was no armed depopulation of New York City by federal troops. 9/11 created the false national assumption that All-American cities would receive the same level of federal treatment as New York City.
The ten of billion of dollars invested in the creation of Homeland Security on an emotional level reinforced the illusion of national preparation; protection and safety from crisis’s like Katrina.
“In the aftermath (of Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans), many people opened their hearts, their wallets, some opened their homes, a lot of people did what they thought they could,” shed said. Three weeks later, every one understands “the rebuilding is going to take weeks and moths and years.
It (the rebuilding of New Orleans) no longer looks like a problem the individual can solve”.
The direct emotional consequence of the designed disinformation and trickles of information from the Bush administration and media in order to mask the ruthless depopulation and downsizing of the New Orleans region had the effects of leaving the American public in a unnecessary suspended state of sadness.
This designed Oval Office manipulation of the American population is commonly referred to the Katrina fatigue and is deepening the trauma of New Orleans.
Emotional shock
Millions of Americans are still suffering from the emotional stock from viewing the physical devastation, the human suffering of Katrina, the forceful depopulation and official abuse of power that has followed.
Americans have collectively been shamed, traumatized and manipulated by what they have seemed on TV, the Internet and media as state terrorism.
“Looking down a street where it’s house after house, and the garbage and the innards of the house, there’s something about it that people in general can’t grasp,” Dr. Dorsey, president-elect of the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Center, said is beyond most people ability to cope.
“It’s not within the realm of any experience anyone’s ever had. (The flooding of New Orleans is outside) your ordinary repertoire of experience”.
Political danger of Katrina fatigue
Political danger of Katrina fatigue is growing in the aftermath of Katrina.
As stated above, politicians, multinationals and other elements within American political culture are fully aware of the Katrina fatigue and are taking advantage of the fact most Americans are still to emotionally overwhelmed, impaired and cognitively disorientated by the shock and awe of the flooding of New Orleans.
They are using this mental state of the American population to shape their political agendas.
New Orleans needs 300 billion to rebuild a city where every one can live and work in, while developing a better future for their children.
Bush and Congress have only approved 62 billion dollars and are pushing plans for a depopulated city of 65,000 down from 500,000.
The Oval Office can do this because there is no national grass root political resistance to stop them. Not one industrial redevelopment plan has been made public that explains how southern Louisiana can used the current crisis to expand it regional industrial based and economy.
One of the major contributing factors is that most American still recovering from the initial stock of New Orleans that has translates into political impotence.
The question of who outside of the president in the Oval office was really responsible for the disaster for the federal command of chain has disappeared.
The critical issue of the toxic spells and the trillion dollars of legal exposures have mysteriously been computer blackout of the press.
News writers have to fight their editors to get publishes a new wave of political sensitive articles on New Orleans.
Getting the pain of the flooding of New Orleans out and seeing it for what it really compassion and personal fear is will deepen the healing process for most Americans.
People who are serious suffering mentally from Katrina should seek professional help.
Mental Health experts collectively have remains dangerously quiet about the massive and growing mental health issues surrounding the Katrina aftermath. Few experts have spoken out about the long-term emotional effects to the American people, particularly the youth, out watching the emerging New Orleans death march.
Mental health experts have not stepped to the plate
Mental health experts collectively remain very quiet about the national scale and depth of the traumatization of layers in the American population and the failure of Homeland Security and the Oval Office to take measures to physically protect the American population, particularly the children.
According to Rosemary Schwartzbard, a member of the American Psychological Association’s Disaster Response Network, the emotional impact (Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans) is similar to what followed the terrorist attacks. But unlike the response to Sept. 11, which fostered national pride, Schwartzbard said, the perceived bubgling of the rescue effort in Louisiana and Mississippi has added another emotional to cope with: disappointment. “With this one (Katrina), it is, how can this happen? How could we let those people down?”
Emotional context of what happen
It’s very important to understand the emotional context of what happen in New Orleans and how it continues to affect us in our daily lives and our feeling toward New Orleans.
One of the reasons for confronting the Katrina fatigue is that is on going and deepening.
Katrina fatigue is being used as a mental terror weapon to retraumuaized layers of the population.
Every time some one talk about New Orleans, an article appears in the local newspaper about New Orleans and news update stories comes TV about New Orleans, the Katrina fatigue is triggered in our thoughts. Most of these thoughts have been forced out of consciousness because they are too painful. As a consequence, the thoughts end up being distorted and more powerful in the dark of our subconscious.
By understanding the context of New Orleans and what happening with our emotions we can better focus our thoughts and actions in a historical context and reasonable frame of reference and not remain victims of our own emotion. From Black Americans this is very important because 600,000 suffering people lives are directly political dependent on what we do a daily basis.
We as a people must reach out and help each other deal with the pain, because there is a lot that must be done to support New Orleans and other at risk cities.
The people of the state of Louisiana are being forced by the Oval Office to make choices about the downsizing of the largest city and most import region of the state. They are not emotionally ready. The people of New York City are still debating what to do with the former site of the World Trade Center. Imagine if the whole inland of Manhattan has been flooded, where they would be in the urban planning process four-month after the event.
As such most Americans, particularly these in devastate areas of the Gulf, are struggling to think effectively. They are direct dependent on the rest of the American to take care of them in the short-run and save then cities.
Trauma 101
In order for the human mind to mental survive a major emotional traumatic event; the mind will try to push the pain and suffering of the event out of active conciseness (active
thinking) and into the subconsceiness. The experience of Katrina is like watching a going physically and mentally abusive event. The viewers is re-traumatized daily. Rather than seek treatment, most American has elected to try and compartmentalized or repress the traumatic experience New Orleans.
These attempted have met with little or no success, because in New Orleans tragedy is very reality and daily events. The news reports about serve to re-traumatize most people and trigger deep felt helplessness and hopelessness.
The effects of the trauma and it repression will continue, in many cases, deepened if not treated.
This repression of thinking strategically is very mentally draining for most people. In the case of Katrina, just thinking or talking about it is fatiguing for most people because they must bring up old trauma they have yet to deal with.
Emotional (so called Katrina) fatigue is one of a group of associative symptoms of a very traumatic event. Other symptoms of trauma are depression, anxiety, hopelessness, helpless, reduced confidence, apathy, irritability, emotional numbness and intense fear.
Three of the most common behavioral aspect of posttraumatic stock is anger, withdrawal and increased avoidance of situations or activities that feel uncomfortable (like being around other people).
The first level of response to New Orleans is pure emotional stock. No generation of Americans in modern history has every witness over a million American homeless or dead in a single day mass destruction event.
How the initial trauma of Katrina was created
There has never been a one-day attack on any American city that destroyed a whole metropolitan region of 1.4 million people.
According to the Wall Street Journal, 80 percent of the city of New Orleans was inundate with 25 billion gallons of water, in some cases thirdly feet of floodwater within 20 minutes following the collapse of 17 th Street levee at 4:00 am in the dark of morning.
This event killed or causes to be made missing 100 times the number of American as either the attack on Pearl Harbor or 9/11.
The emotional shock was intensified because American did not have the opportunity to watch the break in the levee develop and open up. The whole event of the massive collapse of the levee was stealth. When the 250 million American watching the after math of Katrina on the first day went to sleep after the hurricane Katrina moved in land hundred of miles away from, the city of New Orleans was reported by all the newspapers, national networks and the secretary of Homeland Security to purportedly have missed a major bullet and was mopping up.
The storm has passed a hundred-mile northeast of the city. Only the southwestern edge hit New Orleans. There was minimal flood and National Guard units were moving into the region.
The nation was left with the emotional impression that all was will, only to awake to a horror with no collective motional reference point. An area larger than all but the largest cities in North America was covered with a dark salt lake with dead bodies floating everywhere. Once again the President was missing from public view and the information from Washington, like 9/11 was very confusing at best.
Beyond American imagination, emotional overload
At first light after the flooding of the city of New Orleans, ten of thousands of helpless men, women and children were stranded on their rooftops, elevate highway and bridges. The national was collectivity mentally shocked to see on TV in their own homes, many alone, hundred of thousands of Americans forced on roof tops begging for their children lives, marooned in a dark lifeless inland sea that was once the city of New Orleans.
The press coverage left nothing but the alligator infestation, to the viewer’s imagination.
The graphic nature of the pictures of dead black bodies, homes destroyed and whole areas inundated with floodwater was way beyond the scale of any of the annual the flooding of cities alone the mostly white towns, villages and cities on northern Mississippi River. The physical devastation was emotionally overwhelming. There was little background or understanding to the 428-foot collapse of the 17th Street levee.
The collapse was beyond the comprehension of most views and invoked one man’s deepest fear’s death by asphyxiation. The fact that the levee ruptured in 4:00 am added a stealth dimension to the fear and hopelessness. Most Americans were spared the horror of the alligator infestation of the city.
The fact the thousands of victims were showed on live TV and hundred of live interviewed of Black Americans having been reduced to begging for President Bush by name to save them day after day after day, added to the sense of abandonment and powerful emotional transfer of hopelessness the TV viewers felt.
Their children about New Orleans bombarded many parents with unanswerable questions. Many children around the country were serious emotionally impaired by watching the horror of New Orleans alone at home.
Emotional disconnect from reality
Many Americans after being inundate with shock journalism for days, disconnected emotionally and either escaped to non-Katrina programming or stopped watching TV and reading the newspapers.
The human mind unable to process the massive flow of emotions created by the tragedy in New Orleans started shutting down the consciousness level to survive. At this point many people started to emotionally disconnect New Orleans in their minds. They were felled with symptoms of trauma i.e. depression, anxiety, hopelessness, helpless, reduced confidence, apathy, irritability, emotional numbness and intense fear.
Their behavior was a case of posttraumatic stock i.e. angers withdrawal and increased avoidance of situations or activities that feel uncomfortable (like being around other people).
As the federal government took over the recovery efforts and the Oval Office blaming of the victim started most Americans were disconnecting from the process even more.
Re-traumatization
Public schools around the country opened and the fall election campaigns were launch. The Rita come and re-traumatized the nation. Every other tropical depression that entered the Gulf of Mexico, re-traimized layers of the American population.
The media carefully started to reinvent the New Orleans story from the military embedded news reporting teams stand point of view. The oil and chemical toxic crisis disappeared from the news; the city was forcibly depopulated.
The story was moved from New Orleans to Washington on to the issue of funding. The refugee story was created and the blaming and public beheading of the head of FEMA become front-page news for a few weeks.
The issue of the federal military slow response disappeared in the congressional hearings. The repair of the levees and the downsizing of New Orleans city moved to the back of the New York crisis’s section, now New Orleans appear periodically in the national section of the major newspapers.
Nothing has yet been said about the reindustrialization of the New Orleans region. Out side of food, shelter and opening the local school, reindustrialization planning is the next most important thing on local, regional and national levels.
Political analysts have taken note of the increasing lack of national protest movement in the after math of Katrina.
Mass shaming
Many political concerned Black and White Americans political thinkers are reporting a serious lack response and mobilization of layers within the political culture of America in terms of the deepening crisis and horror of New Orleans. Even more dangerous is the fact that traditional pro-Black white segments are not effectively energizing their bases to rally behind the Black struggle to remain in New Orleans. Too many people are treating the Bush Katrina policy as fait accompli.
Most political analysts account for this lack general mobilization political opposition to the so-called Katrina fatigue. The fact is that Katrina fatigue is a critical of interactive symptoms.
Even the Million More national rally organized by the Nation of Islam, the most political sophisticated, best funded and organized Black political group in North America, saw very low turnout numbers and a political platform void of a strategic analysis of the implications of Katrina in the larger context of the Black struggle.
Neither the rally nor it follow up did not reflect urgency of the political situation in New Orleans. If millions of people had gathered in Washington, One would have imagined Katrina should have triggered a protest rally of millions in many cities. Black people were in a state stock from Katrina and unable to do more than show up and back counted.
Political disorientation
The political disorientation aspect Katrina fatigues is being used by the Republican Party to damage control and to consolidate a new politician base in southern Louisiana. Many in the mainstream media have misinterpreted these mental trauma symptoms as revealing a general sense of political hopeless in America about the New Orleans.
This feeling of helplessness is a carefully nurtured misinformation campaign. American activists and larger layers of the political culture reported being so emotionally overwhelmed by the horror they cannot read hear or mentally focus, concentration and engage in serious discussions about Katrina for more than a few minutes.
While many Americans understand the importance of New Orleans in terms of the potential of the same things happening in other at risk cities, their insight has yet to translate into political action.
Emotionally compartmentalization
Americans en la mass has emotionally compartmentalized the horror and emotionalism of the New Orleans drama in their minds. The Katrina fatigue has also created a political impotence and lack political response by some of the most informed layers of America. This level of political impotence has not been seen since the Mc Cathy era of the 1950’s.
At the heart of the Katrina fatigue is cognitive impairment. That is, a heightened Black Americans feelings of inferiority and an inter-linkage and deep-seated white fear of poverty complex. If Bush could depopulate New Orleans after Katrina, why not Atlanta, Baltimore, Philadelphia or the city New York. There millions of poor Black Americans living in cities near water.
The reporting and post storm federal Katrina policy has carefully manipulated emotionally charged group of related middle class fears related ideas, feelings, memories and impulses working together, mainly in the subconscious of target groups of middle class whites.
Black fear of extermination and genocide
For at risk Black Americans the feeling of its extermination and genocide has been manipulated by the calculated Oval Office abandonment of New Orleans for a week and the enforcement of the depopulated of 80 percent 425,000 of the 495,000 people the city population of New Orleans. With many of these internally displaced refugees being forced off Homeland Security grants and medical support programs, they will face homeless alone and the associative mental health issues. 50 perecent of displaced refugees are children.
New Orleans depopulation: Roots, part VI
This media reporting of this on going human drama is very humiliating for most Black Americans and targets and triggers some of African Americans deepest fears. Black America first saw the power of TV reporting of the Civil Rights and Peace on both white and Black American emotional states. The Chicago Seven, the Ronny King changed the TV-based emotional manipulation. The mass manipulation forever changed with the CBS special “Roots”. Black students were so emotionally overwhelmed, they by the graphic nature of their enslavement, they attacked the white students during the CBS special. The white student was only aware of the emotional reason there were being. Last years the Bush intensified it illegal attack s on Arab Americans.
Working class Black and whites fear of total destitution and lost of peer group social status has been played out TV and in the newspapers. The homeowner centric federal grant given away leaves most working class people destitute without homes, jobs or money. This nightmare is not lost on the white middle of America.
Inferiority and poverty often emotionally act together, holding one back from success or political action.
The US military role in 9/11 and the tsunami gave American the illusion that if it happened in the US, there would a massive and immedicated rescue afford launch.
According Helicopter Rescuer Analysis: federal forces deployed a week before Katrina has the means to evacuate 140,000 victims the first few first day and 250,000 every day until the region were safe. Knowing this reality immediately changes how one feels about how the events unfolded in New Orleans.
Flooding of New Orleans was also shocking because it reduced that time frame by using the TV special 24/7 to traumuised the American population to hours. This reduction of the time and lack of emotional preparation intensified the stock of the flooding of New Orleans.
Destitution, Blaming
At the core of the impotence is emotional fatigue is emotional overload. The Katrina fatigue has much deeper layers of emotions attachments for Americans.
White Americans are the target of a massive misinformation campaign about New Orleans. Moral questions are being to surface about why white New Orleanains didn’t do more to help the Black get out.
At the core of this Oval and oil lobby misinformation campaign is blaming the victim. In its initial phase, the white media blamed Black American and poor whites for r not leaving New Orleans before Katrina hit the region. Then the African American administration of the city was blamed for bad planning. Then FEMA and the state of Louisiana was blamed for it slow and small response.
Now rich Northern states, cities and Black communities are being blamed for resisting being forced to pick up the ten of billions of dollars to support the hundred of thousands Black people forced into the death march out of New Orleans to Northern welfare rolls.
By trying to blame everyone else the President, Oval Office, federal agencies and oil companies who committed the political violence in New Orleans are released from the responsibility for what was not done to protect the people of New Orleans.
While most Americans are slowly starting to see through the Oval Office blame tactic, they remain politically impotent and appearing indiffence to the Black drama in New Orleans
The reality is that more Americas are seriously traumatized and are trying to survive the best way they know repression of their fears.
More hours of aggressive reporting have been logged on Katrina, than all the other American tragedies combined. During the initial period of reporting, all TV channel carried non-stopped Katrina coverage 24/7.
Public begging for life and willful abandonment
The American population was inundated with the horror and human suffering drama of Katrina. The begging for life and willful abandonment of the Oval Office was emphasis in the coverage. Over 300,000 people were stranded, and the news reporting, particularly on the Internet, allowed the viewers to track individual struggle to their ends, either life or death.
Beyond a emotional breaking point, the Oval Office and media forced the American population, particularly the white middle class to internalized the political drama of New Orleans as some how the collective fault of the white race and not a small group of evil people. This was made easy by the way American news about New Orleans says little or nothing about the white working class people who have also lost everything.
But now the stock and trauma is lessening for many people and they want to know the truth of what they struggled to get through.
The task real recovery for most Americans to engaging in the national debate about how to rebuild a New Orleans to house 500,000 people, not 65,000.
Most Americans find it is emotionally very difficult to have serious pro-long political discussions about New Orleans. Many said its because the unprocessed personal trauma still is too emotionally raw and painful to them.
Other political at risk Americans fear the long reach of the Bush-Cheney Oval office police state.
The feelings of helpless and being emotionally overwhelmed are the common feelings reported. Large segments of Americans have withdrawn from the whole Katrina affair and are acting like good Germans during WWII. The American population is emotionally hard pressed to deal with the going sense of helplessness and depression about New Orleans.
Americans are start to emotionally experience the deepening political crisis in New Orleans like the massive Asia trade deficit, i.e. massive, growing and hopeless.
God cruse
Mayor C. Ray Nagin suggested that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that “God is mad an America” and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting. “Surely God is mad at America,” said Mr. Nagin, He (God) sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it’s destroyed and put street on this country.” In the face of federal bankruptcy and Congressional rejection of a 250 billion dollar New Orleans redevelopment proposal and massive and surging Chinese trade, Mr. Nagin also promised that New Orleans would be a “chocolate” city again. “This city will be majority African –American city…It’s the way God wants it to be, You can’t have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn’t be New Orleans”.
This type of obvious political lunacy four months after Katrina still received a platform in the New York Times and other respected American newspapers because of the degree of political disorientation of critical segments of American political culture as a direct consequence of Katrina fatigue.
Politicians like mayor C. Ray Nagin and the Oval office, multinationals and other elements within American political culture are fully aware of the consequences of Katrina fatigue and are taking advantage of the fact most Americans are still to emotionally overwhelmed, impaired and cognitively disorientated by the stock and awe of the flooding of New Orleans. Most Americans are shocked to learn that New Orleans current population is less than 65,000.
The human tragedy that followed the flooding of the city New Orleans was beyond any internal emotional reference experience of the American people. The devastation in New Orleans has no historical or emotional reference point for the mass of American people.
Most Americans are still so emotionally overwhelmed by the horrific events in New Orleans they are unconsciously apartmentializing or emotionally shutting down in order not to deal with their deeper fears.
For many other Americans already mentally at risk who have either come from other crisis regions of the world or live in the inner city war zones, report that New Orleans has retrigger deep past traumas (i.e. flashback from the past).
The Oval office’s shocking and ruthless forced depopulation and downsizing of the city of New Orleans has created a particularly emotional limbo and trauma for most Americans because of its stark emotional contrast to the aggressive national campaign to rebuild and regenerate of the New York region that took place after 9/11.
No American city has ever been depopulated of 85 percent of its population by armed federal troopers in less than a week and then not allowed return.
National sense of collective shame
There is a misplaced national sense of collective shame about the genocide-taking place in New Orleans. Watching what is happening to the hundred of thousands of poor suffering Black African Americans being driven away from New Orleans increasing is taking on the same collective helplessness as watching the oppressed people of Darfur, Sudan.
White Americans and increasing numbers of Black Americans emotionally wants the New Orleans nightmare and shame to go away or disappear from the daily news reporting. Like the reporting of Darfur, Sudan, most mainstream new papers are selectively covering New Orleans, no longer in a separate daily section.
These stories are now hidden in the rear of the paper. Personal tragedy has replace political analysis. The 500,000 internally displaced Americans running out money in the die of winter hundred of miles away from New Orleans, is no longer front page news.
Increasing numbers of Americans Black and white are also reporting being re-traumatized every time they see, hear or read updates on the on going crisis in New Orleans and the struggle of the suffering people New Orleanains trying to piece their lives back together.
Before the term Katrina fatigue was intervened in Washington, University of Maryland journalism professor Susan Moeller and other warned the national of the emotional consequence of “compassion fatigue”, a condition that sets in when people believe a tragedy is beyond their control.
In the case of New Orleans, compassion fatigue would describe the emotional condition helplessly watching of the forced downsizing and depopulate of over 400, 000 people from the city of New Orleans.
Compassion fatigue vs. Katrina fatigue
Professor Moeller suggested that stories about crisis are more emotionally digestible when people are empowered to help, an experts on media’s coverage of conflict and disasters.
Using Professor Moeller analytical model: 9/11 was very digestible because everything possible was done to saved life and rebuild families and the city of New York. There was no armed depopulation of New York City by federal troops. 9/11 created the false national assumption that All-American cities would receive the same level of federal treatment as New York City.
The ten of billion of dollars invested in the creation of Homeland Security on an emotional level reinforced the illusion of national preparation; protection and safety from crisis’s like Katrina.
“In the aftermath (of Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans), many people opened their hearts, their wallets, some opened their homes, a lot of people did what they thought they could,” shed said. Three weeks later, every one understands “the rebuilding is going to take weeks and moths and years.
It (the rebuilding of New Orleans) no longer looks like a problem the individual can solve”.
The direct emotional consequence of the designed disinformation and trickles of information from the Bush administration and media in order to mask the ruthless depopulation and downsizing of the New Orleans region had the effects of leaving the American public in a unnecessary suspended state of sadness.
This designed Oval Office manipulation of the American population is commonly referred to the Katrina fatigue and is deepening the trauma of New Orleans.
Emotional shock
Millions of Americans are still suffering from the emotional stock from viewing the physical devastation, the human suffering of Katrina, the forceful depopulation and official abuse of power that has followed.
Americans have collectively been shamed, traumatized and manipulated by what they have seemed on TV, the Internet and media as state terrorism.
“Looking down a street where it’s house after house, and the garbage and the innards of the house, there’s something about it that people in general can’t grasp,” Dr. Dorsey, president-elect of the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Center, said is beyond most people ability to cope.
“It’s not within the realm of any experience anyone’s ever had. (The flooding of New Orleans is outside) your ordinary repertoire of experience”.
Political danger of Katrina fatigue
Political danger of Katrina fatigue is growing in the aftermath of Katrina.
As stated above, politicians, multinationals and other elements within American political culture are fully aware of the Katrina fatigue and are taking advantage of the fact most Americans are still to emotionally overwhelmed, impaired and cognitively disorientated by the shock and awe of the flooding of New Orleans.
They are using this mental state of the American population to shape their political agendas.
New Orleans needs 300 billion to rebuild a city where every one can live and work in, while developing a better future for their children.
Bush and Congress have only approved 62 billion dollars and are pushing plans for a depopulated city of 65,000 down from 500,000.
The Oval Office can do this because there is no national grass root political resistance to stop them. Not one industrial redevelopment plan has been made public that explains how southern Louisiana can used the current crisis to expand it regional industrial based and economy.
One of the major contributing factors is that most American still recovering from the initial stock of New Orleans that has translates into political impotence.
The question of who outside of the president in the Oval office was really responsible for the disaster for the federal command of chain has disappeared.
The critical issue of the toxic spells and the trillion dollars of legal exposures have mysteriously been computer blackout of the press.
News writers have to fight their editors to get publishes a new wave of political sensitive articles on New Orleans.
Getting the pain of the flooding of New Orleans out and seeing it for what it really compassion and personal fear is will deepen the healing process for most Americans.
People who are serious suffering mentally from Katrina should seek professional help.
Mental Health experts collectively have remains dangerously quiet about the massive and growing mental health issues surrounding the Katrina aftermath. Few experts have spoken out about the long-term emotional effects to the American people, particularly the youth, out watching the emerging New Orleans death march.
Mental health experts have not stepped to the plate
Mental health experts collectively remain very quiet about the national scale and depth of the traumatization of layers in the American population and the failure of Homeland Security and the Oval Office to take measures to physically protect the American population, particularly the children.
According to Rosemary Schwartzbard, a member of the American Psychological Association’s Disaster Response Network, the emotional impact (Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans) is similar to what followed the terrorist attacks. But unlike the response to Sept. 11, which fostered national pride, Schwartzbard said, the perceived bubgling of the rescue effort in Louisiana and Mississippi has added another emotional to cope with: disappointment. “With this one (Katrina), it is, how can this happen? How could we let those people down?”
Emotional context of what happen
It’s very important to understand the emotional context of what happen in New Orleans and how it continues to affect us in our daily lives and our feeling toward New Orleans.
One of the reasons for confronting the Katrina fatigue is that is on going and deepening.
Katrina fatigue is being used as a mental terror weapon to retraumuaized layers of the population.
Every time some one talk about New Orleans, an article appears in the local newspaper about New Orleans and news update stories comes TV about New Orleans, the Katrina fatigue is triggered in our thoughts. Most of these thoughts have been forced out of consciousness because they are too painful. As a consequence, the thoughts end up being distorted and more powerful in the dark of our subconscious.
By understanding the context of New Orleans and what happening with our emotions we can better focus our thoughts and actions in a historical context and reasonable frame of reference and not remain victims of our own emotion. From Black Americans this is very important because 600,000 suffering people lives are directly political dependent on what we do a daily basis.
We as a people must reach out and help each other deal with the pain, because there is a lot that must be done to support New Orleans and other at risk cities.
The people of the state of Louisiana are being forced by the Oval Office to make choices about the downsizing of the largest city and most import region of the state. They are not emotionally ready. The people of New York City are still debating what to do with the former site of the World Trade Center. Imagine if the whole inland of Manhattan has been flooded, where they would be in the urban planning process four-month after the event.
As such most Americans, particularly these in devastate areas of the Gulf, are struggling to think effectively. They are direct dependent on the rest of the American to take care of them in the short-run and save then cities.
Trauma 101
In order for the human mind to mental survive a major emotional traumatic event; the mind will try to push the pain and suffering of the event out of active conciseness (active
thinking) and into the subconsceiness. The experience of Katrina is like watching a going physically and mentally abusive event. The viewers is re-traumatized daily. Rather than seek treatment, most American has elected to try and compartmentalized or repress the traumatic experience New Orleans.
These attempted have met with little or no success, because in New Orleans tragedy is very reality and daily events. The news reports about serve to re-traumatize most people and trigger deep felt helplessness and hopelessness.
The effects of the trauma and it repression will continue, in many cases, deepened if not treated.
This repression of thinking strategically is very mentally draining for most people. In the case of Katrina, just thinking or talking about it is fatiguing for most people because they must bring up old trauma they have yet to deal with.
Emotional (so called Katrina) fatigue is one of a group of associative symptoms of a very traumatic event. Other symptoms of trauma are depression, anxiety, hopelessness, helpless, reduced confidence, apathy, irritability, emotional numbness and intense fear.
Three of the most common behavioral aspect of posttraumatic stock is anger, withdrawal and increased avoidance of situations or activities that feel uncomfortable (like being around other people).
The first level of response to New Orleans is pure emotional stock. No generation of Americans in modern history has every witness over a million American homeless or dead in a single day mass destruction event.
How the initial trauma of Katrina was created
There has never been a one-day attack on any American city that destroyed a whole metropolitan region of 1.4 million people.
According to the Wall Street Journal, 80 percent of the city of New Orleans was inundate with 25 billion gallons of water, in some cases thirdly feet of floodwater within 20 minutes following the collapse of 17 th Street levee at 4:00 am in the dark of morning.
This event killed or causes to be made missing 100 times the number of American as either the attack on Pearl Harbor or 9/11.
The emotional shock was intensified because American did not have the opportunity to watch the break in the levee develop and open up. The whole event of the massive collapse of the levee was stealth. When the 250 million American watching the after math of Katrina on the first day went to sleep after the hurricane Katrina moved in land hundred of miles away from, the city of New Orleans was reported by all the newspapers, national networks and the secretary of Homeland Security to purportedly have missed a major bullet and was mopping up.
The storm has passed a hundred-mile northeast of the city. Only the southwestern edge hit New Orleans. There was minimal flood and National Guard units were moving into the region.
The nation was left with the emotional impression that all was will, only to awake to a horror with no collective motional reference point. An area larger than all but the largest cities in North America was covered with a dark salt lake with dead bodies floating everywhere. Once again the President was missing from public view and the information from Washington, like 9/11 was very confusing at best.
Beyond American imagination, emotional overload
At first light after the flooding of the city of New Orleans, ten of thousands of helpless men, women and children were stranded on their rooftops, elevate highway and bridges. The national was collectivity mentally shocked to see on TV in their own homes, many alone, hundred of thousands of Americans forced on roof tops begging for their children lives, marooned in a dark lifeless inland sea that was once the city of New Orleans.
The press coverage left nothing but the alligator infestation, to the viewer’s imagination.
The graphic nature of the pictures of dead black bodies, homes destroyed and whole areas inundated with floodwater was way beyond the scale of any of the annual the flooding of cities alone the mostly white towns, villages and cities on northern Mississippi River. The physical devastation was emotionally overwhelming. There was little background or understanding to the 428-foot collapse of the 17th Street levee.
The collapse was beyond the comprehension of most views and invoked one man’s deepest fear’s death by asphyxiation. The fact that the levee ruptured in 4:00 am added a stealth dimension to the fear and hopelessness. Most Americans were spared the horror of the alligator infestation of the city.
The fact the thousands of victims were showed on live TV and hundred of live interviewed of Black Americans having been reduced to begging for President Bush by name to save them day after day after day, added to the sense of abandonment and powerful emotional transfer of hopelessness the TV viewers felt.
Their children about New Orleans bombarded many parents with unanswerable questions. Many children around the country were serious emotionally impaired by watching the horror of New Orleans alone at home.
Emotional disconnect from reality
Many Americans after being inundate with shock journalism for days, disconnected emotionally and either escaped to non-Katrina programming or stopped watching TV and reading the newspapers.
The human mind unable to process the massive flow of emotions created by the tragedy in New Orleans started shutting down the consciousness level to survive. At this point many people started to emotionally disconnect New Orleans in their minds. They were felled with symptoms of trauma i.e. depression, anxiety, hopelessness, helpless, reduced confidence, apathy, irritability, emotional numbness and intense fear.
Their behavior was a case of posttraumatic stock i.e. angers withdrawal and increased avoidance of situations or activities that feel uncomfortable (like being around other people).
As the federal government took over the recovery efforts and the Oval Office blaming of the victim started most Americans were disconnecting from the process even more.
Re-traumatization
Public schools around the country opened and the fall election campaigns were launch. The Rita come and re-traumatized the nation. Every other tropical depression that entered the Gulf of Mexico, re-traimized layers of the American population.
The media carefully started to reinvent the New Orleans story from the military embedded news reporting teams stand point of view. The oil and chemical toxic crisis disappeared from the news; the city was forcibly depopulated.
The story was moved from New Orleans to Washington on to the issue of funding. The refugee story was created and the blaming and public beheading of the head of FEMA become front-page news for a few weeks.
The issue of the federal military slow response disappeared in the congressional hearings. The repair of the levees and the downsizing of New Orleans city moved to the back of the New York crisis’s section, now New Orleans appear periodically in the national section of the major newspapers.
Nothing has yet been said about the reindustrialization of the New Orleans region. Out side of food, shelter and opening the local school, reindustrialization planning is the next most important thing on local, regional and national levels.
Political analysts have taken note of the increasing lack of national protest movement in the after math of Katrina.
Mass shaming
Many political concerned Black and White Americans political thinkers are reporting a serious lack response and mobilization of layers within the political culture of America in terms of the deepening crisis and horror of New Orleans. Even more dangerous is the fact that traditional pro-Black white segments are not effectively energizing their bases to rally behind the Black struggle to remain in New Orleans. Too many people are treating the Bush Katrina policy as fait accompli.
Most political analysts account for this lack general mobilization political opposition to the so-called Katrina fatigue. The fact is that Katrina fatigue is a critical of interactive symptoms.
Even the Million More national rally organized by the Nation of Islam, the most political sophisticated, best funded and organized Black political group in North America, saw very low turnout numbers and a political platform void of a strategic analysis of the implications of Katrina in the larger context of the Black struggle.
Neither the rally nor it follow up did not reflect urgency of the political situation in New Orleans. If millions of people had gathered in Washington, One would have imagined Katrina should have triggered a protest rally of millions in many cities. Black people were in a state stock from Katrina and unable to do more than show up and back counted.
Political disorientation
The political disorientation aspect Katrina fatigues is being used by the Republican Party to damage control and to consolidate a new politician base in southern Louisiana. Many in the mainstream media have misinterpreted these mental trauma symptoms as revealing a general sense of political hopeless in America about the New Orleans.
This feeling of helplessness is a carefully nurtured misinformation campaign. American activists and larger layers of the political culture reported being so emotionally overwhelmed by the horror they cannot read hear or mentally focus, concentration and engage in serious discussions about Katrina for more than a few minutes.
While many Americans understand the importance of New Orleans in terms of the potential of the same things happening in other at risk cities, their insight has yet to translate into political action.
Emotionally compartmentalization
Americans en la mass has emotionally compartmentalized the horror and emotionalism of the New Orleans drama in their minds. The Katrina fatigue has also created a political impotence and lack political response by some of the most informed layers of America. This level of political impotence has not been seen since the Mc Cathy era of the 1950’s.
At the heart of the Katrina fatigue is cognitive impairment. That is, a heightened Black Americans feelings of inferiority and an inter-linkage and deep-seated white fear of poverty complex. If Bush could depopulate New Orleans after Katrina, why not Atlanta, Baltimore, Philadelphia or the city New York. There millions of poor Black Americans living in cities near water.
The reporting and post storm federal Katrina policy has carefully manipulated emotionally charged group of related middle class fears related ideas, feelings, memories and impulses working together, mainly in the subconscious of target groups of middle class whites.
Black fear of extermination and genocide
For at risk Black Americans the feeling of its extermination and genocide has been manipulated by the calculated Oval Office abandonment of New Orleans for a week and the enforcement of the depopulated of 80 percent 425,000 of the 495,000 people the city population of New Orleans. With many of these internally displaced refugees being forced off Homeland Security grants and medical support programs, they will face homeless alone and the associative mental health issues. 50 perecent of displaced refugees are children.
New Orleans depopulation: Roots, part VI
This media reporting of this on going human drama is very humiliating for most Black Americans and targets and triggers some of African Americans deepest fears. Black America first saw the power of TV reporting of the Civil Rights and Peace on both white and Black American emotional states. The Chicago Seven, the Ronny King changed the TV-based emotional manipulation. The mass manipulation forever changed with the CBS special “Roots”. Black students were so emotionally overwhelmed, they by the graphic nature of their enslavement, they attacked the white students during the CBS special. The white student was only aware of the emotional reason there were being. Last years the Bush intensified it illegal attack s on Arab Americans.
Working class Black and whites fear of total destitution and lost of peer group social status has been played out TV and in the newspapers. The homeowner centric federal grant given away leaves most working class people destitute without homes, jobs or money. This nightmare is not lost on the white middle of America.
Inferiority and poverty often emotionally act together, holding one back from success or political action.
The US military role in 9/11 and the tsunami gave American the illusion that if it happened in the US, there would a massive and immedicated rescue afford launch.
According Helicopter Rescuer Analysis: federal forces deployed a week before Katrina has the means to evacuate 140,000 victims the first few first day and 250,000 every day until the region were safe. Knowing this reality immediately changes how one feels about how the events unfolded in New Orleans.
Flooding of New Orleans was also shocking because it reduced that time frame by using the TV special 24/7 to traumuised the American population to hours. This reduction of the time and lack of emotional preparation intensified the stock of the flooding of New Orleans.
Destitution, Blaming
At the core of the impotence is emotional fatigue is emotional overload. The Katrina fatigue has much deeper layers of emotions attachments for Americans.
White Americans are the target of a massive misinformation campaign about New Orleans. Moral questions are being to surface about why white New Orleanains didn’t do more to help the Black get out.
At the core of this Oval and oil lobby misinformation campaign is blaming the victim. In its initial phase, the white media blamed Black American and poor whites for r not leaving New Orleans before Katrina hit the region. Then the African American administration of the city was blamed for bad planning. Then FEMA and the state of Louisiana was blamed for it slow and small response.
Now rich Northern states, cities and Black communities are being blamed for resisting being forced to pick up the ten of billions of dollars to support the hundred of thousands Black people forced into the death march out of New Orleans to Northern welfare rolls.
By trying to blame everyone else the President, Oval Office, federal agencies and oil companies who committed the political violence in New Orleans are released from the responsibility for what was not done to protect the people of New Orleans.
While most Americans are slowly starting to see through the Oval Office blame tactic, they remain politically impotent and appearing indiffence to the Black drama in New Orleans
The reality is that more Americas are seriously traumatized and are trying to survive the best way they know repression of their fears.
More hours of aggressive reporting have been logged on Katrina, than all the other American tragedies combined. During the initial period of reporting, all TV channel carried non-stopped Katrina coverage 24/7.
Public begging for life and willful abandonment
The American population was inundated with the horror and human suffering drama of Katrina. The begging for life and willful abandonment of the Oval Office was emphasis in the coverage. Over 300,000 people were stranded, and the news reporting, particularly on the Internet, allowed the viewers to track individual struggle to their ends, either life or death.
Beyond a emotional breaking point, the Oval Office and media forced the American population, particularly the white middle class to internalized the political drama of New Orleans as some how the collective fault of the white race and not a small group of evil people. This was made easy by the way American news about New Orleans says little or nothing about the white working class people who have also lost everything.
But now the stock and trauma is lessening for many people and they want to know the truth of what they struggled to get through.
The task real recovery for most Americans to engaging in the national debate about how to rebuild a New Orleans to house 500,000 people, not 65,000.
posted by Nubianobserver at 1:28 PM
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