shame on me?

sheesh. i talked to my dad on saturday before the ND game. i've been thinking for a few days now about trying to do something about the katrina devastation/aftermath in my seminar paper for my race, racism, and american law seminar. feeling excited and inspired by this idea, i told my father. he responded with a raised-volume rant. essentially he said this:

"you know, you people who aren't even here need to just stay out of it. i see what's going on. people are working 20 hours a day to try to get things back to normal. shame on everyone who wants to politicize this situation. and if you want to write something about this for your class, shame on you, too."

shut down. just like that. my father hasn't said "shame on you" to me in i don't know how long. i'm not a child. i'd like to think that i actually have reasons for my opinions now, unlike my anti-establishment-just-because teenage years. i'm not an idiot, either. but i can't shake the notion that my father will never see me as an intelligent, rational adult; that, to my father, i will always be the argumentative, stomping-my-feet version of myself that existed when i was 16.

even though i know this, i can't help but feel hurt by the disconnect that sometimes separates my father and me. i can't fix it, no matter what i do (i've tried). too often, i end up just assuming that my father must be right. those father/daughter roles run deep for me, too.

but not this time. not this time.

my father (and my step-mother, whom i could hear in the background) apparently think new orleans mayor ray nagin is "an asshole" and "a whiner". my father seems to find some nobility in this show of trent lott's decision to rebuild his home on the beach. my father seems to think that all of these people who are poor and out of work should get off their asses and start taking responsibility for themselves. what i don't understand is how can my father criticize people for "politicizing" what's going on and not see that what he is saying (at least to me) also politicizes the situation?

i'm not latching onto this disaster as a means to criticize the bush administration. there are plenty of other excuses to do that. i see the post-katrina melee as an example of how america has failed itself. it's kinda like how sauron in the lord of the rings stories focussed so much on what was going on elsewhere that he failed to catch frodo and sam in his own country, a failure that ultimately led to his own demise.

oh my god. i just completely outed myself as the world's biggest geek. but it's an apt analogy.

what i'm trying to say is that we cannot change that katrina has happened. and it does no good to complain about what we should have done prior to katrina to have mitigated the damage that has already occurred. what i hope is that the united states will be able to learn some lessons from this storm, that we will see katrina as an excuse to re-think energy policy, environmental policy, economic policy, disaster relief policy, race relations policy, and maybe even reconsider our set of national priorities.

and if i deserve to incur any sort of shame for that kind of "politicizing", then i welcome that shame. because some things are more important.