Dave Haxton posts his thoughts about the Katrina disaster from his perspective as an Asatruar. His “rant” makes some incisive points about competence, politics, and spin. In the effort to provide another perspective as a companion to this post and this one, I provide an excerpt. If it whets your appetite, go read the entire piece.

I agree with Laura Bush on at least one thing: this was not about race. Nor was it about “class”, corruption, voting patterns or religion.

This is about competence. And the United States is seemingly blessed with perhaps the most incompetent set of government officials at all levels of any nation on the planet. We’ve just managed something that I thought was impossible: we made the Soviet response to the Chernobyl disaster look good.

And while there was certainly no lack of stupidity and incompetence on the part of local and state officials, the Bush Administration really does stand out in this regard: because this is but the latest in a long string of idiocies that seem to be it’s hallmark, and will ultimately become it’s legacy.

–Dave Haxton, MacRaven

I don’t agree with everything Dave wrote — in particular, his opinion about how storm victims could have responded to this crisis. If you have strong opinions, he is the best person to engage in discussion with, since he’s the author.