Northern Valley Beacon

In a classroom presided over by a Master Sergeant at the First Guided Missile School was a large sign that proclaimed INCOMPETENCE KILLS. The Master Sergeant could give long litanies of troops and civilians that died not because of successful assaults by an enemy, but because of gross incompetence of leadership.

The 21st century seems to be shaping up as the Century of Great Incompetence. The more we learn about 9/11, the more we realize that the people who presume to lead us and maintain our security were, well, diddling around over matters of territory and status and all the superficial trappings of power and wealth that the so-called conservatives hold so dear. While the number of people living in poverty increases year-by-year, the Super Bourgeoisie prattle about tax cuts and keeping more of the money they finagle.

The moral and intellectual incompetence that has diverted America's resources into the bottomless sinkhole we created in Iraq is registering on a majority of Americans, according to the most recent polls.

The post-Katrina events in New Orleans have revealed that the national powers in charge chose negligence in recent years regarding that city. They also revealed that there is a seething underclass that mounted an insurgency against rescue efforts in New Orleans. Incomprehensible? Only if you choose to ignore America's transformation into a corporate-led return to feudalism and a hierarchical society that takes freedom, equality, and justice out of the American agenda. George W. Bush is the King of the Super Bourgeoisie.

The incompetence of our government in dealing with Katrina is stunning. Previous hurricanes in recent years have had their devastating effects on Florida, but emergency services worked. That is largely because they struck communities with wealth and power connections. Katrina struck the area of the Gulf populated by many of our poor. Our current government is simply not set up to provide them with emergency services and humanitarian rescue and relief.

It is not a matter of an incompetent system. The system is incompetent because its moral and intellectual underpinnings are incompetently understood.

After an election in which the designated red states howled about values, particularly Christian values, one can only wonder what version of the New Testament they read. The one we read has as the primary Christian message the responsibility to feed the poor and heal the sick. When one brings that message up to the neo-conservatives, they go into a rant about entitlements and personal responsibilities. And so they have left it to the poor, the aged, and the sick to rescue themselves in New Orleans. It is part of their Intelligent Design--which in this case involves a large element of the survival of the fittest, meaning the richest and most powerful and most privileged.

Incompetence drives events in Iraq and New Orleans. It is not just the incompetence of political hacks who are rewarded for their loyalties with high offices that they are not fit to discharge. It is intellectual and moral incompetence. It is theological incompetence among those who cannot understand the message of Christ. It is political incompetence among those who cannot understand the American principles of freedom, equality, and justice. It is the social incompetence of those who find the fascist ideology so attractive and compelling.

[For the many visitors from throughout the nation who visit this site, we recommend that you view some of the neo-conservative blog sites in South Dakota for a good review of how intellectual and moral incompetence expresses itself.]

Incompetence kills. It is killing the United States of America.