The abysmal negligence that led to the present catastrophe in the Gulf states has left the world aghast. The country once believed to be the world leader in terms of science and education, standard of living and general well-being has turned out to be an incompetent blundering colossus that can’t even take care of its own population, of their needs and their safety.

There has been all this bluster about security but when nature strikes, the president goes partying and playing golf – after the levees were already giving in to the water from Lake Pontchartrain. The reality of the criminal neglect doesn’t seem to seep through to the consciousness of anyone who is in a position of leadership.

George W. Bush says ‘No thank you, we don’t need your help’ to a world that’s stunned by the horror of all the innocent victims in New Orleans and along the Gulf coast and the mostly black and poor people who are dying in the streets and in the Superdome. The rest of the world is grieving, countries from all over the world offer to send help and resources and the president tells the American people to give charity money to the state of Louisiana. Charity money! Sure, the involvement of the government should be downplayed unless an invasion of a foreign and independent country is involved for the huge profit of the big corporations.

The great American dream has turned into the great American nightmare. Cracks have spread all over the surface of the country, and those cracks have been widening in a spectacular fashion after George W. Bush was installed in the White house by the Supreme Court. Cracks in terms of national security, cracks in terms of living standards, cracks in terms of job security, cracks in terms of the number of people living below the poverty level, cracks in terms of health insurance and the possibility of looking forward to an economically secure old age.

From the powerbrokers there is simply complete contempt for the individuals who make up the vast majority of the country’s population and this total neglect and indifference is now going to strike back at the conceit and the arrogance of the so-called leaders. Those self-proclaimed leaders are nothing but the CEOs of an enterprise that is foundering massively. America Inc. is broke morally and economically.

These dictatorial and conceited leaders are blind and totally indifferent as far as the well-being of the masses is concerned. Everything in the world stands or falls with the masses who produce the goods, but the leaders seem to think that they don’t need any legs to stand on. They are cutting themselves off from below and the great debacle that is in wait for all Americans, and maybe for the rest of the world as well, is going to strike like a thunderous Götterdämmerung.

The willingly blindfolded criminals at the top and the obediently hallelujah-singing mainstream media are in for a rough awakening. There will be no redemption of the evangelical fundamentalists, no angels are going to carry them up to heaven while the world lies smoldering in sin and ruin. We are going to be stumbling around in the ruins together, the righteous evangelical fundamentalists with the rest of us, with the Muslims, the Jews, the Hindus, the agnostics and whoever is left in the world, irrespective of the worldly possessions we have managed to accumulate.

The American illusion that ‘We are the greatest nation in the world, we are the best, we are the leaders of the civilized world’ will be the pall on the grave of the deceased country. An empire never lasts and this empire of ignorant leaders and an ignorant population is due for the great fall. The leaders have of course carefully cultivated this generalized ignorance, knowing well that an informed population would have rebelled long ago. A population which had learned the art of independent thinking would never have put up with being so abused, could never have been fooled into acceptance of the obscene lack of justice and respect for human beings.

Why did Americans insist so much on their belief that they were the center of civilization, that they had all the virtues and everybody else had all the vices? Because they were told so again and again. They were told, while all the time they were battling with economic precariousness, how lucky they were to be living in the greatest democracy on earth. Sure, the great democracy where the dead bodies are decomposing in the foul stench of the streets of New Orleans. We had to send the National Guard to Iraq, you see. And the money went to Halliburton. There are priorities in the life of America, Inc.

And just as it is almost impossible to believe that your father is a thief, for the same reason did the American population refuse to see the truth about their leaders of empty minds and unfeeling hearts. Blind megalomania is now going to be the end of the nation that is crumbling from within.

In all this talk about values from this bogus administration, the population totally lost sight of the fact that their values had long been lost, that individual accumulation of goods had replaced the true values of the heart, the hallelujah chorus had replaced the people of true feelings for any other beings than their own selves.

And the walls came tumbling down.