Gaudy Patter

This morning, Liz and I emerged from a Lisbon hotel room after ensconcing ourselves inside for two days while watching our nation fall apart.

As she said in her latest post over on our travel blog, the hotel staff left us entirely alone -- no knocks from housekeeping, no inquiries from the front desk. Not a peep. It's entirely possible that Portuguese hotels are more laissez-faire when it comes to hopspitality, but even our cab driver was aware of the devastation that hit the Gulf Coast.

Whisking us to the train station, he expressed sympathy for those affected, even though he has no love for the potted plant that inhabits the Oval Office. His English wasn't great, but it was good enough to permit us to communicate our displeasure-in-common.

"Where you from?" he asked. Cab drivers ask us this all the time, often in mid-conversation. I usually assume they know we're American but are too polite to assume so. These days, a blunder like that could cost you your tip. I feel so American, I assume it comes off me in waves just as distinctly as the French funk that chokes the Paris Metro in August.

"Ain't that a bitch?" prophet Paul Mooney (a Louisiana native) might say. People abroad are too polite to assume that you might be an American. Giving us the benefit of the doubt, you might say. I had a similar feeling several years ago when I lived in San Francisco's downwardly mobile Western Addition:

My apartment was just above a bus line that took me straight to the office, four floors up from a methadone clinic. Waiting for the #22 one bright morning, a shy, young white woman waiting for the long-delayed bus paced back and forth for several minutes before spotting my laptop bag and summoning courage enough to ask me for the time.

Back to the present: we have serious, serious problems, America. Stuff no one wants to talk about, including me. Because I naively thought we were past stuff like this. I'm such an idiot.

On Tuesday, I was fretful about the damage to New Orleans and its residents. By Wednesday, I was really worried, but by Thursday, I was righteously "pissed," if I may appropriate a phrase from NoLa's chief executive, Mayor Ray Nagin. Please read this transcript of his interview -- and then tell me we have nothing to worry about. Convince me, please.

If Katrina had submerged West Palm Beach or Kennebunkport with her storm surge, you know this would have played out differently. I suspected that on Tuesday, but accepted it as concrete fact Thursday night.

That was a bitter pill to swallow. Everyone's blogging about this, so I don't guess that I have too much to add to the conversation that (I desperately hope) America will be having with itself about race and class in the days to come.

"This is a show tune, but the show hasn't been written for it yet."

Well, we've got a script to accommodate Ms. Simone's tubthumping song. The curtain's up, and we are all in the front row.

Still, I feel the fool. I really thought we were better than this, as a nation. I thought songs like "Mississippi Goddam" were damning relics of our past.

I don't know if anything will have changed by the time the water recedes. I doubt it.

I'm slightly more introspective than angry at this point, but that's just my suburban programming processing its subtle algorithms. I'm furious with our federal government. Seething with anger.

But mostly, I'm still wrapping my head around the shocking certainty that if you're poor and/or not white, you are truly on your own in the United States. It used to just be a suspicion I harbored; now, it's knowledge.

Maybe it was better to be ignorant. Ask me in a few years.