NOLA Shooting

[MosesTheTank]

@bogeybrown, something I wrestled with for a long time is wondering if the cultural value of New Orleans outweighs the bad. Do I accept the shit in light of other merits? The food culture is spectacular and the musical contribution is unmatched anywhere on the planet (at least it was). Of course there is more to it than that. With more than a little sadness I say no, it is not a good trade off. I say the same about cities like NY.

The worst of the violence, entitlement, and complicity by acquiescence are no longer offshoots of certain conditions, certain neighborhoods, temporary fluctuations, etc... it has BECOME the culture. It is a cancer that is swallowing not just itself but everything around it. New Orleans institutions have been destroyed or severely damaged, including some that are very near and dear to my heart. What was once, perhaps, a melting pot is now or is in danger of becoming a shit-pot. And all of its ills are blamed on everyone else.

Reading the comments in news stories on this shooting I see that the NRA, Trump, and white people in general, are to blame. At some point, I am certain the shooters will be defended as the victims of all of the usual circumstances. Their total contribution to society will be this shooting and the cost to tax payers for whatever costs are incurred in going after them. I would like to personally deliver them to an unshaded platform somewhere out near Green Canyon. Maybe provide enough water for a fortnight to let the situation settle in. Then comes the parched and swollen throat, perhaps not resisting the desire to take a sip of the water...

It really sucks to feel this way, but it is a denial of a brutal reality to hold onto romantic notions of Paul Prudhomme and Zigaboo Modeliste. So fuck them.

 

[FS1]

The problems are easy to see. The solutions are so difficult because you can not even talk about them. It's Racist to do so. It's Racist just to think about it. Problems never go away by themselves. So we are effed it seems. Or at least those people are.

 

[MosesTheTank]

NOLA is an unfixable shitshow, and it kills me. Historically and culturally it is one of America's gems, but it can't get out of its own way. ..

I was talking to a prosecutor who had just come from a conference and she was telling me that attempts had been made to do what we were doing over in NOLA but that it was an epic failure. Even being a native New Orleanian I couldn't understand how such a simple process wouldn't work there until she explained that the court in NOLA couldn't seat a jury that would convict their violent felons. I did a mental face-palm and realized how so simple a process would come to a sceaching halt without a pool of law abiding jurors.

I would have clicked the LIKE button, but I feel anything but "like" reading it. This problem is hardly unique to New Orleans, NOLA is just really good at taking things to extremes. The situation is not dissimilar to insurgents receiving civilian support, which is the only way any insurgency has ever survived for very long. On some level I can accept that it just how things work. On another level I cannot accept that the idiots who coddle and protect murderers (whose entire existence is enabled by the very people that they seek to destroy) are taking everything down with them, including themselves. And I think they are OK with that. I'm not.

 

[j-huskey]

All it takes for evil to triumph is good men do nothing......

Good men have done much, yet evil triumphs on the streets of NOLA.

Do gooders have done much, and enabled evil.
Good men have allowed do gooders too much leeway in destroying values. It's time good men's no meant no....

NOLA areas resemble the atmosphere depicted in the "mad max" movies... or the blood drenched streets in Haiti back when, or the blood drenched streets of Mog/Somalia, or Beriut, or S.A, or the pograms where innocent people got blood fucked, whatever, in each case, the end result is the same. Violence.

1938/39 Germany had lots of cultural history.... what good did it do ? Cambodia had cultural history..... what good did it do ? So... NOLA has cultural history, what good is it when the current status drowns it, and the people who inhabit the city AND the state both allow and enhance it.

Why feel angst for "something" that rejects you, your values, your culture, and every single thing you stand for, and blame 'you and your' kind for the septic tank "they - the denizens" created.

They are not worth conscious thought beyond a defensive wariness of the evil they are, and having a plan to keep them at bay from destroying you and yours.

Anything else is misplaced emotion leading you to the same hell "they" created and inhabit, because, they continue to take miles when good men gave them the inch. And good men (and women) pay a high price for allowing it to continue.

Not that jmho is fwiw a shit...

Insurgents receiving civilian support is apt, very apt.
And.... those insurgents plainly stated goal is to destroy 200 years of country, people, government, and its successes and successful institutions... they pretty much have succeeded in NOLA.

And fwiw, I have family living there... one of them teaches school.... a couple of school day descriptions are surreal...

 

[bogeybrown]

@MosesTheTank , I've wrestled with the same things, but come to a different outlook:

We agree that our hometown is a shithole. It was a racist, violent shithole when we grew up there and we both left it behind. Our parents may?? have been the last generation to grow up in a NOLA who's merits outweighed its shortcomings on a balance sheet. However, unlike all the other shitholes in America that come to mind, I still feel like NOLA has something intangibly special despite its enormous faults.

In a relatively young country, NOLA has true history and was significant before it was even part of the US. It's food and music is indeed truly unique, and outside of maybe some regional BBQ cuisine I'd make an argument that it produced perhaps the only original cuisine in the entire country.

Where else in the country do visitors instantly get the sense that they aren't really in America anymore? That may not be all good, but there is just something "different" about the city, and I still feel it even after all these years.

There are shitholes across the country, but I'm at a loss to think of one with the "feel" or "vibe" of our native city.

We agree that neither of us will ever move home, and weep at what's its devolved into, but that dirty bitch on the river still has "something" that can't be found anywhere else.

 

[j-huskey]

@MosesTheTank , I've wrestled with the same things, but come to a different outlook:

We agree that our hometown is a shithole. It was a racist, violent shithole when we grew up there and we both left it behind. Our parents may?? have been the last generation to grow up in a NOLA who's merits outweighed its shortcomings on a balance sheet. However, unlike all the other shitholes in America that come to mind, I still feel like NOLA has something intangibly special despite its enormous faults.

In a relatively young country, NOLA has true history and was significant before it was even part of the US. It's food and music is indeed truly unique, and outside of maybe some regional BBQ cuisine I'd make an argument that it produced perhaps the only original cuisine in the entire country.

Where else in the country do visitors instantly get the sense that they aren't really in America anymore? That may not be all good, but there is just something "different" about the city, and I still feel it even after all these years.

There are shitholes across the country, but I'm at a loss to think of one with the "feel" or "vibe" of our native city.

We agree that neither of us will ever move home, and weep at what's its devolved into, but that dirty bitch on the river still has "something" that can't be found anywhere else.

There is a "nostalgia" to NOLA we will never lose, those of us who walked there, and felt the "pull". That "pull" is very real to me, and if you felt the "pull", you can't help but love what it meant.
I understand the angst.... I understand the deep sense of loss..... and I have a depth of anger toward those who destroy "that place", that now exists "only in my mind".

Last time I was down, I looked at the red x houses still standing, with the skeletons still in the attics, unknown, unclaimed, unwanted, and anger boils.
Then when the hotel had us ride in an armed guard bus to the civic center for the events, I looked at my seat mate as he said, "TonSonNuht 69, wire on the windows, didnt think I'd go back there here.." was a downer...
Still pissed at the red x junk.

Not so sure I wasnt pissed worse that the hotel had us on a guarded bus, and about 4 miles away, my cousin was teaching school, driving to and from home by herself unarmed...
That's just so unreal.

 

[Maggot]

Respectfully to you native NOLA boys.

Personally, Ive never cared for the city (or any city for that matter), from what little Ive seen of it. I watch the Mardi Gras parade and it seems like they are worshiping devils and every form of foul spirit. Like Halloween on steroids. Makes me think that if this is what is on the surface, what is below? Is whats going on surprising, ween in that light?

I am far from religious but I have learned that "You (tend) to reap as you sow."

Look at Haiti, where a lot of it came from. VooDoo?, give me a goddamn break.

Kill it with fire.

 

[Bender]

We drove through NOLA on the way to Florida a couple years ago, the best thing I got out of our brief visit was it sure made me glad I live in Wyoming......

 

[Fig]

I've only been there twice, and quite frankly I spent every waking moment I wasn't working bouncing from one oyster bar to the next in The French Quarter, but....
As an outside observer I will say that the whole city looked like it was slightly rotten to me. The streets, buildings, everything looked like it was built a long time ago, and the technology and will to maintain it had long since fled. I can't think of another city where "decline" has been so physically evident. That is saying nothing for all the other elements, but what it looked like on the surface. That said, everyone was extremely nice to me, and seemed very proud of all the fine eateries they were happy to direct me towards!

 

[j-huskey]

In vino veritas.. (or some facsimile thereby)..

 

[Maggot]

In vino veritas.. (or some facsimile thereby)..

Yep, a lot of truth can be found in a bottle of good red wine. Think Ill go crack one now...

 

[bogeybrown]

Respectfully to yuo all who call or called it home.

What I see when I look at NOLA is, food and music aside, a culture that appears to worship VooDoo, and every foul spirit. If I see that on the surface, what is lurking below? Im far from religious but at great expense Ive learned "You (tend) to reap what you sow". If thats the case, and it appears to be, what can you expect.

VooDoo???Look at Haiti. give me a break and kill it with fire. Maybe Katrina was a good thing?

Mardi Gras actually derives from Catholicism and the last big throwdown before the start of Lent (Fat Tuesday is always the day before Ash Wednesday).

Voodoo and the related practices basically only exist as a tourist thing, deriving long ago from the slaves and now relegated to trinket shops.

Amongst its MANY causes of decay, I never found Satanism nor Paganism to be amongst them.

 

[MosesTheTank]

Respectfully to you native NOLA boys.

Personally, Ive never cared for the city (or any city for that matter), from what little Ive seen of it. I watch the Mardi Gras parade and it seems like they are worshiping devils and every form of foul spirit. Like Halloween on steroids. Makes me think that if this is what is on the surface, what is below? Is whats going on surprising, ween in that light?

I am far from religious but I have learned that "You (tend) to reap as you sow."

Look at Haiti, where a lot of it came from. VooDoo?, give me a goddamn break.

Kill it with fire.

Well, this really is a change of topic but, Mardi Gras goes something like this...

Mardi Gras celebrations start a few months before Mardi Gras day, also known as Fat Tuesday, which is the day before Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras is a way of blowing things out before lent. Since New Orleans is, historically, seriously Catholic there are a lot of people trying with all their soul to make the most of things before fasting or giving up whatever it is they give up for lent. This is all a bit hypocritical, but hey, it's fun and it's New Orleans. As an aside, the whole lenten thing, which is figured by the phases of the moon, seems seriously pagan.

"Worshipping devils" is not something many people in The City That Care Forgot would deny. New Orleans owes much of it's history to the Hatian Revolution. In 1809, when the Haitian Revolution ended and Haiti became independent, thousands of white, free black and enslaved people fled to New Orleans, doubling the city's population in just a few months. Even today, many New Orleanians, black and white, trace their ancestral roots to Haiti.

To this day you can see some of the Hatian/African/God-only-knows-what stylistic influences in a primally dapper group known as the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club.

One descendant of such Hatian immigrants is one Marie Laveau (b. New Orleans 1827 - d. 1862). She is best known for a brand of voodoo called New Orleans Voodoo, which is a mixture of Native American and African spiritualism and whatever brand of witchcraft/painting the walls with chicken blood/OG twerking came from Haiti. They worship all kinds of shit, which can vary depending upon mood, composition and number of drinks they just had, and who knows what other factors. Marie Laveau is a celebrity from beyond the grave and she was openly discussed in a positive light in my classroom at St Francis Xavier. We even had a picture of her in art class. Devil worshipers and the Pope all under one roof, whodathunk?

The first time I really went after a girl was when I fell in lust with a creole girl who worked in a voodoo shop (tourist trap). I feigned interest in voodoo dolls and was eventually banned for never buying anything. If I only had my own voodoo spell maybe I could have one her over.

There are too many other cultures thrown into the mix to mention, but are no less colorful and all have their contributions (Jews, Central Americans, the French and Spanish that had been there since the beginning, a small number of Germans, etc).

Mardi Gras can mean different things depending upon social class, race, ethnicity, and what neighborhood you're from. They all have different music and I played drums (or a drum) in probably all of them.

The view of a tourist watching Mardi Gras can be a very different world from a local participating in private functions.

Mardi Gras is not a bad thing in its entirety and I have never seen such a blending of cultures who were able to remain distinct in one place. There was not a single murder in the history of Mardi Gras until after Katrina (2005)

Sadly, even some of this has been ripped from the city. I doubt the type of krewe the shooters are involved in has anything to do with voodoo or with brass instruments, just brass and lead.

 

[MosesTheTank]

Mardi Gras actually derives from Catholicism and the last big throwdown before the start of Lent (Fat Tuesday is always the day before Ash Wednesday).

Voodoo and the related practices basically only exist as a tourist thing, deriving long ago from the slaves and now relegated to trinket shops.

Amongst its MANY causes of decay, I never found Satanism nor Paganism to be amongst them.

If I wasn't so wordy I would have beat you to the punch...

 

[W54/XM-388]

Considering the remaining police and a bunch of out of state hired "law enforcement" CA type thugs went door to door violently taking vulnerable people's firearms and leaving them to the mercy of looters & criminals after Katrina and did their best to destroy the guns as much as possible before being forced to give some back........

 

[Veer_G]

Not going into massive details, but this "spiritualism" from Africa made a beeline from West Africa via the practices of the Yoruba, strongly flavoring Santería, Candomblé, Vodou, and other beliefs. I've been in and around Caribbeans of all stripes since the 80s, and dealt with tons of them, especially Santeros. At one point in time I even wore an eleke de las siete potencias as a sign of respect, being way past hip deep in daily dealings.

 

[MtnCreek]

Marie Laveau...another man done gone....