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Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez

Jims crooked grin beamed out from under the cap he
always wore. The words LAISSEZ LES BON TEMPS
ROULEZ were embroidered in red on it. He often hollered
the motto as a greeting in his own pea-patch French, Lay
Say Lay Bone Temps Roo Lay, Yall. Let the good times roll.
He was a charming schemer who always had something
cooking that he was sure would be the next big thing.
Whaddiya think? he said.
He had just given me a little plastic cylinder that opened
to reveal two more plastic cylinders joined along their
sides. Their fake gold plating sparkled cheerfully. They bore
indecipherable gibberish in minute script.
I didnt know what to think.
Genuine imitation reproductions of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, he told me. They sell like SACRED RELICS in the
plastic Jesus market, he declared with a mercantile twin-
kle in his eye. Jim sold the scrolls by mail from ads in the
back of religious comic books. They were moving well,
almost as well as the hats.
Jim long ago moved on to the Big Trade Show in the
Sky. The disaster in the City Below Sea Level brought him
to mind. I thought of the motto on his cap and his slightly
larcenous optimism. Both reminded me of the Big Easy, a
city in many ways like our own Key West, peddling fun and
a romantic past, hustling tourists and trying not to change.
Let the good times roll, Jims mantra, was also the unof-
ficial motto of New Orleans. Its a phrase that could be the
motto for the entire Imperial Age here in early twenty-first
century America.

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The good times have been rolling for many years for the
American Empire. We came out of two world wars
unscathed, our homes and industry untouched, masters of
the globe. Then for fifty years, a third of the world took
themselves out of the game by having government
employees plan their economies. Those economies ran as
government monopolies tend to, that is, like coal-fired,
steam-powered engines of inefficiency, injustice and cor-
ruption. When the engines finally seized up, those countries
abandoned central planning. During that same time,
Americans did the exact opposite, expanding government
just as fast as we could. The destruction of New Orleans is
a model for the failure of big government and top-down
planning.
The natural disaster in New Orleans pales before the
political disaster. Such a fury of recrimination and finger-
pointing would never have followed a simple act of God.
New Orleans is a city on the dole with a huge mendi-
cant class. Its very existence depends on a mighty wall of
federal tax money to hold back the lake and the river. Tax
slaves all over America turn the pumps that keep the city
dry. Hurricane Katrina didnt destroy New Orleans. It was
destroyed by the failure of the great wall of money. The
wall failed under unusual, but entirely predictable, stress.
Like the city itself, those who remained during the
storm were utterly dependent on government charity.
They, like the wildly corrupt local government, could not
rise to the occasion when self-reliance, preparedness and
neighborly support were most needed. The violence and
angry demands for help were business as usual in a city
even more dangerous than Americas other great welfare
city, Washington, D.C. But with the working citizens gone,

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Democracy: The Painted Whore

the jazz clubs closed and the police AWOL, there was noth-
ing else to distract us.
The political failure was total. From the New Orleans
Police Department, whose spectacular corruption would
make a Congressman blush, to the nations frontline
defense against pocketknives and sneaker bombs, the
Department of Homeland Security, public agencies every-
where shuffled around aimlessly while people looted stores,
murdered one another, and drowned. And yet, Americans
maintain an almost religious faith in our politicians abilities
to save our butts and keep the party going. We look to
Washington like the animals, two-by-two, looked to Noah.
Like empires of the past, Imperial America must now
divide its resources between foreign wars and homeland
circuses. Katrina is the rainy day for which the nation
should have saved. But we have no savings. The Empire
exists on the charity of strangers, of foreigners, of those
from whom we buy our electronic toys, flat-screen TVs and
granite countertops.
Our once-proud habits of self-reliance have been bred
out of us by an exploding public sector and the widely
accepted propaganda that Uncle Sam will bail us out of
anything. We are receiving offers of help from people living
in dirt poor backwaters, all of whom have more savings
than we do, most of them smart enough to send the aid to
private agencies.
Having chosen the Imperial Scapegoat, the luckless for-
mer head of FEMA, Congress has boldly called for some
$60 billion for relief and rebuilding, without ever talking
about where such a vast sum will originate or how it will be
squandered by the same agencies that failed so miserably
after the storm. We will borrow it, of course, because we

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Hal OBoyle

have no other choice. America has no reserves or savings.

There are certainly a few traditionalists who had the
good sense to put aside some Spam, a little cash and shells
for the shotgun. But we wont see them on TV. Those sen-
sible few should take care to avoid any of the legions of
government agents who are now searching, disarming and
bossing around everyone they meet in South Louisiana.
They may be a little weak on disaster relief, but the feds
wrote the book on martial law.
The rebuilding of New Orleans will be the biggest pub-
lic works project since the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
which, like New Orleans, were maintained by shifts of
slaves constantly pumping river water.
It will be a project worthy of the peak of the Empire of
IOUs. Dr. Greenspan now has his excuse to keep the paper
flowing and the party going till the end of his tenure and
beyond. Watch for helicopters raining credit cards down on
a grateful populace.
Laissez les bon temps roulez!

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