American Exceptionalism and the Commodification of Catastrophe

“You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker.”
-- Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

Reading of the eyewitness who described hearing a sickening thud as a suicidal victim of Hurricane Katrina hit the floor of the New Orleans Superdome immediately brought to mind the horrific testimonies of those who survived Ground Zero on 9/11. If the connection seems tenuous, the association is thematic. Both events, the fall of the Trade Center and the cataclysmic hurricane, were signal moments in the devolution of an ingrained national sensibility: “American Exceptionalism.”

The notion that it can’t happen here (whether the violation is perpetrated by an ideological force, terrorism, or the result of an overwhelming natural catastrophe) is no longer an unconscious assumption in the national psyche.

When the unthinkable occurred, there was certainly nothing above average or extraordinary about the citizens’ lawlessness. But the way the criminality in the aftermath of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina was talked about was very different. “Pilfering,” the preferred euphemism for stealing at Ground Zero, is only different in kind from the “looting” label applied to the survivors of Katrina.

If we remember that the distinctly American sense of “exceptionalism” first described by de Tocqueville glossed over a largely unwritten historical subtext of slavery, racism, ethnic prejudice, and class discrimination, it’s not surprising that the cultural rhetoric as well as the government’s logistical response were radically different in each circumstance.

Of course, the bloated bodies found floating in the hurricane waters weren’t wearing three-piece suits. And there were those more pressing matters in other parts of the world, like Iraq and Afghanistan. That the slow response seemed more appropriate to a tragedy in a third world country surely had something to do with race and class. A Los Angeles Times correspondent reported seeing only four white people in surveying the scene at the Superdome.

The point isn’t that our actions were any different than other countries and citizens of the world; it is that we expect them to be. We think of ourselves as, well, “Exceptional.” We are not. But this is good. Because thinking like this puts us on a precarious moral high ground in that it creates an us/them dichotomy, Jacksonian thinking in the most ominous sense, and more Shirley than Andrew.

But I’ve digressed from the point implied by my title: the consequences of economic looting, capitalistic thuggery, and a not-so-free corporate enterprise. The immediate economic fallout from the hurricane was an enormous spike in gas prices at the pump. But shouldn’t it be that moral “exceptionalism”—a righteousness borne of having God on our side—should manifest itself as a willingness on the part of big oil to share the burden of the nation’s tragedy?

Instead, the disaster presented itself as a golden opportunity to gouge the American public. Wasn’t it ironic that we applied the term “price gouging” to individual gas stations without ever considering the actions of the major oil companies. Given the fact that Shell Oil made a profit of five billion dollars at the time, up 57% from the previous quarter, and that Exxon recently showed a forty billion dollar quarterly profit, isn’t it time we started asking why?

Peace - Randy