Why Little George Can’t Feel Your Pain

One thing Little George learned from genuinely strong men he knows (like Big George, his father; these are actual family nick-names, by the way) is how to act decisively in moments of high emotion. Only, with Little George, it's just an act. He can only do his decisive shtick when he’s not really feeling anything. That’s why he flees into isolation in the immediate aftermath of crisis. He needs time to anesthetize himself.

With the New Orleans situation, Little George has an added motive for denial. The structural injustices of the system he serves have become literally visible. If he let himself feel this pain, he would have to face the fact that it’s always been there. Really tough SOB’s like Haley Barbour have always known that, felt that. They can take it on. They just don’t care. It’s that simple for them. They are monsters of greed.

But Little George can’t face hard core stuff. He needs simple facades of good and evil to relate to. The members of his retinue have learned that their principal task is to surround him with such facades. That’s how they have controlled the policies of our nation.