News commentators reporting on the carnage wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans have often described the inundated American city as “a modern Atlantis.” Strange how a supposed “myth” so readily comes to minds of even persons only vaguely familiar with the lost capital of the Ancient World! But its parallels with the Louisiana metropolis far exceed the floods that afflicted them both. In the story of Atlantis as related by the Greek philosopher, Plato, 2400 years ago, humans once achieved an extraordinarily high level of civilisation on a large island off the western coasts of Europe and North Africa.

            Originally dedicated to the principles of civil liberty and spiritual virtue, they eventually turned away from those fundamentals that comprised the foundation of their very existence. They embraced selfish materialism and worshipped, no longer the Soul of Nature, but technology, because it, they believed, could fulfil all their hopes and desires, aspirations now sunk to levels of vulgarity, banality, and sensationalism. Since greed feeds upon itself, becoming hungrier the more it consumes, the debased Atlanteans looked beyond their island for additional riches. They invaded and seized the natural wealth of foreign lands, blaming the victims for their own conquest.

            Over time, an immense empire, history's first global corporation, stretched from Atlantis far beyond horizons. Puffed up with pride in the supremacy of their armed forces and the economic might of their kingdom, the Atlanteans sought to impose their way of life on the rest of the world –  for the benefit of other peoples, but most especially for their own insatiable thirst for power. For many years, Atlantis was the richest, most militarily potent, feared and hated capital on Earth.

            As Plato wrote of its citizens, “To those who had an eye to see, the depth of their degeneracy was obvious enough. To the majority, whose judgment was distracted by superficial appearances, however, they appeared, in the pursuit of unbridled self-indulgence and power, to be at the height of their good fortune. But Zeus, the god of gods, who reigns by law, and whose eye can see into such things, when he perceived the deplorable condition of this formerly admirable people, decided to punish them, and reduce them through the terrible agency of his stern justice.”

            At the zenith of their political, economic and military magnificence, the Atlanteans precipitated a war in the Eastern Mediterranean. Typically successful at first, their arrogance was humbled by the entirely unexpected humiliation of their armed forces. In the midst of this debacle and mired in the awful consequences of aggression gone terribly wrong, the splendid city of Atlantis was reduced to flaming ruins by a natural catastrophe and dragged with most of its screaming inhabitants to the bottom of the sea. The formerly all-powerful Atlantean Empire utterly collapsed in chaos, followed by a prolonged Dark Age.

                 In the millennia following these cataclysmic events, Atlantis was not forgotten, but so little of its story endured, most scholars dismissed it as a “myth,” or fable. Surviving generations of humanity had suffered a planetary amnesia, from which we are only just now beginning to recover, as evidence mounts for the one-time existence of the sunken city. But more than archaeological artefacts are resuscitating Atlantis.

            As the present condition of our own civilisation begins to more resemble its decline, comparisons are unavoidable. When Plato stated that the Atlanteans were punished by Zeus, “who reigns by law,” he inferred that moral law and natural law are neither separate nor unrelated to each other, but actually component parts of the same universal force that not only permeates the entire universe, but is the stuff of which all existence itself is made. In other words, the Atlanteans had brought about their own destruction through their greed, hubris, and mass-murder masquerading as self-defense, all covered by a gloss of patriotic lies to justify their decadent behaviour.

            Remarkably, the moral cause Plato defined as the origin of the Atlantis destruction was likewise cited in literally hundreds of similar flood-accounts preserved by native peoples around the globe.

            The Crow Indians of North America tell that the Great Spirit, angry with the sins of the world, destroyed all mankind with a great flood. After the cataclysm, he created another humanity by scooping up a handful of dust. Blowing upon it, the first black birds and a new race of people sprang into existence together. When he asked them what they wished to be called, they chose the name “Crow” after the birds that had appeared with them.

            A remote Amazonian people, the Desana, still recall the ancient tribal memory of a time when the sun-god punished their sinful ancestors. “Everything caught fire” in a world-conflagration that was soon after extinguished by a universal flood.

            The Australian Aboriginals tell of Mu-Mu-Na, the flaming rainbow serpent, also known as Mu-It, that fell from heaven to cause a world flood “to wash away the iniquity of men.” When recounting the story, even today, Aboriginal speakers swing a bull-roarer named after their mythic rendering of the deluge-inducing comet, because it imitates the fearsome sound produced by the falling “rainbow-serpent.”

            Variations of the same story of a global conflagration and deluge preceded by the degeneracy of an unrepentant humanity were repeated in the Nile Valley, Sumer, Britain, Ireland, Morocco and among virtually every ancient people on Earth. Parallels between imperial Atlantis in its last years with the United States specifically and the West generally in the early 21st century are obvious enough, as Plato observed, “for all those who have eyes to see.” That is part of the great tragedy sweeping over Americans: they have no sense of history, and not interested in it, except in so far as its interpretation justifies their patriotism.

            But a nation without a past is like a man with no memory of his life up to the last two weeks. Such a person would be entirely lost, unable to understand the pitfalls into which he constantly blunders. So a people minus any historical sense is unable to avoid stumbling from one calamity to another. The events of 11 September 2001 came as an incomprehensible shock to the vast majority of Americans, because they were totally oblivious to US and British foreign policy in the Middle East over the last eighty years that made such an attack inevitable.

            Sixty five years ago, at the start of another war of “liberation,” the leading Atlantologist of the mid-20th century, Lewis Spence, the renowned Scottish folklorist, published a cogent article entitled, “Will Europe Follow Atlantis?” He was the first observer to equate the suicidal immorality of the West with Atlantean decadence just before the Deluge. Now, with America leading the West into an Iraqi cul-de-sac, Spence’s analogy seems all the more relevant and chilling.

            His contemporary, Edgar Cayce, “the Sleeping Prophet,” regarded still as among the most important and valid psychics of all time, likewise spoke often and prophetically about Atlantis –  how the drowned capital would “rise again,” not physically, but in the guilty consciousness of modern man. Cayce stated that the souls of Atlanteans killed in the great die-off were reincarnating in our physical world from the end of the 19th through the 20th centuries in far greater numbers than ever before.

            “Look at the leaders of today,” he was reported as having said during one of his trance-states toward the end of his life in 1945, “Hitler –  Roosevelt –  Mussolini –  Churchill –  Tojo –  Stalin: former Atlanteans all!” When asked why these and other souls from Atlantis had chosen to return to modern times, Cayce responded, “Some to prevent the great catastrophe from recurring. Others to ensure that it happens again, only on a far greater scale of destruction. All of them have been pulled back into our era, because our civilisation is beginning to closely resemble theirs. Resonances between the two are creating a shared vibrational frequency that draws them into this epoch like a magnet.”

            He went on to explain that the destructive Atlanteans are returning not only out of endemic malice, but because they believe cycles of extinction are necessary for higher species growth, just as fires are sometimes required to promote the development of newer, stronger forests. George Bernard Shaw once sadly observed that “the more we learn from history the more we realise men do not learn from history.” Yet, Atlantis is the supreme object lesson. We fail to learn from its cautionary tale at our peril.

            The Atlanteans, in addition to their political and moral corruption, have been accused of so flagrantly exploiting the natural environment to satisfy their insatiable greed –  primarily through extensive mining –  that Nature rebelled against them in the worst possible way. Added to our crimes as a wayward species is our failure as custodians of the very forces that brought us into being and sustain us. Deluged New Orleans is a modern-day Atlantis far beyond any physical resemblance to its ancient predecessor. For the men that built either city, technology was a fine servant but a horrible master. A single-minded worship of applied science so overpowered their common sense, they never doubted that natural law could be suspended and bent to their will.

            Any maritime architect who submitted proposals for a ship that could stay afloat only so long as its pumps continued to operate would be dismissed as either a comedian or a lunatic. Yet, an entire city –  New Orleans –  was built two centuries ago and maintained ever since at the bottom of a colossal bowl below and between the levels of two lakes tenuously held back by a system of faltering pumps and retaining mounds constantly undermined by the Mississippi River. Both the hypothetical ship kept afloat by pumps and the real city maintained in identical fashion are failed attempts at conquering Nature.

            But in stripping New Orleans of its metropolitan infrastructure, Hurricane Katrina blew away the propaganda facade of a system that has been rotting for almost as long as the city’s eroded levees. Near-sighted observers who single out President Bush for his shortcomings in properly responding to the disaster fail to understand that the official corruption, incompetence, and arrogance they witnessed were not the unique sins of a particular administration. Rather, they are endemic of the financial oligarchy that has owned and operated both political parties for the last ninety two years.

            Passage of the Federal Reserve Act rendered the US Constitution a dead letter, because from 1913 until now financial power has rested in the hands of international money-men, the real rulers of America and the West. Fundamentally indifferent to anything outside their worldview of profit and loss, they are paranoid power-freaks, interested only in control for its own sake. They can never wield enough influence, seized as they are by an unrelieved insecurity born of guilt.

            As such, they represent the terminal moraine of a society reaching the end of its long decline from self-indulgence into catastrophe. A failing civilisation masquerading as a “super power” has been exposed by an act of Nature man presumed to dominate. But Katrina was by no means the first of her kind. When Hurricane Andrew devastated south Florida in 1992, President Bush I made a show of munificent assistance in front of the nation’s television cameras. But with the waning of newsmedia interest, federal assistance melted away, leaving residents stranded amidst the ruins to fend for themselves. I know from personal experience what happened, because I drove through the hurricane-damaged region myself, and was deeply appalled by the far-flung devastation, which was still virtually untouched a full year after the disaster.

            That same year, the United Nations published a prophetic warning issued in a science “white paper” summarising the conclusions of leading climatologists from around the world. They stated that modern global warming could no longer be denied, nor its origins in the industrial revolution. More compellingly, their white paper forecast that rising ocean temperatures would generate super-storms and hurricanes of unprecedented frequency and ferocity beginning at the close of the 20th century and continuing into the foreseeable future. Their dire forecast, enunciated nearly fifteen years ago, was originally discarded as “alarmist” by politicians with investments in unrestrained development like George W. Bush.

          As far back as the reign of his own CIA father, federal government authorities warned the President that New Orleans was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Nothing was done. When his son took over, a special project to construct a modern storm-surge defensive network, while providing escape routes and sufficient aid to the city’s residents in a worst-case scenario, was scrapped, because, at a projected cost of $14 billion to complete, it was deemed “too expensive.” Conservative estimates of the damage wrought by Katrina are $110 billion. “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees,” Bush lied on the American television show, “Good Morning America,” six days after repeated warnings from weather experts about the scope of damage expected from Hurricane Katrina.

            While touring Mississippi, with massive destruction all around him, he told his man in charge of Federal Emergency Management Assistance, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” Michael Brown smilingly responded, “Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.” Seven months before, Brown boasted, “Our nation is prepared, as never before, to deal quickly and capably with the consequences of disasters and other domestic incidents.”

            On Brown’s resume, previous to his appointment, he described himself as an “outstanding political science professor, Central State University,” when, in fact, he was only a student at C.S.U.

            Despite chummy personal references by the President, “Brownie” was forced to crawl back in disgrace to Washington, D.C., following his outspoken arrogance and public bungling of all relief efforts. Arrogance and high-handed callousness seemed intrinsic to the Powers That Be. On September 9, House Majority Leader Tom Delay (Republican-Texas), told three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Houston Astrodome, “Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?”

            The Wall Street Journal quoted Rep. Richard Baker (Republican-Louisiana) as having told lobbyists, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” Vice President Dick Cheney agreed with Brown’s cheery assessment of the catastrophe, “I think we are in fact on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise.” To him and his fellow oligarchs, the suffering of hundreds of thousands of his fellow countrymen and women is nothing more than an exercise. Such cold-blooded sentiments should hardly be surprising, however, coming from the Halliburton profiteer of the War in Iraq.

            As some measure of her personal removal from reality, First Lady Laura Bush repeatedly referred to the storm as “Hurricane Corina.” But federal-level aristocrats were not alone blameworthy.

            New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin failed to follow the city’s evacuation plan and press buses into service, as had been clearly and repeatedly outlined in standard civil defense measures. “You know, Tim, that’s one of the things that will be debated,” he said evading questions asked by NBC’s Tim Russert. More serious, over the strenuous objections of health officials, Nagin urged evacuated residents to return to New Orleans while more than half of their city was still flooded with toxic, fecal-floating water. He had bowed under the combined pressure of callous store owners demanding customers for renewed business, and federal officials trying to avoid the cost of caring for too many evacuees. Meanwhile, like vultures circling overhead, real estate developers poised ready to buy up land and various establishments for a few cents on the dollar. No wonder all Bush and Company can talk about is re-building New Orleans, while its inhabitants were still knee-deep in fetid water!

          Only when the next “perfect storm,” Rita, threatened New Orleans a few days later, were its citizens told yet again to get out. By then, they had been reduced to mere bean-bags thrown between federal and local authorities, as incompetent as they were corrupt. For the first two weeks after Katrina, desperately needed medical aid failed to reach the beleaguered city. Just then, Cuba’s Fidel Castro promised five hundred qualified doctors, plus supplies. The Bush administration did not even deign to answer his offer, but continued to allow Americans to suffer and die for lack of all medical assistance. Nor was such help denied from outside sources.

           These are not mere human weaknesses inevitable during the course of responding to an overwhelming catastrophe. Rather, they are endemic to a dysfunctional, degraded system. Despite persistent denials from the White House, both the enormous man-power concentrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with the more than $87 billion funding military operations there, severely handicapped the US government in its response to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. Doubtless, had those soldiers presently engaged in the Middle East and the billions of dollars invested in their fruitless struggle been available to assist their own people in the Gulf Coast victims, the suffering, death and devastation would have been drastically reduced.

            In short, the disaster at New Orleans was man-made from start to finish –  from the city’s unnatural construction and man-made global warming through unrestrained abuse of our planet’s eco-system, to the US government’s gross inadequacy and corruption. Even during the brief interval between Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Washington oligarchs failed to learn any lessons from recent history. The evacuation of Houston, Texas, represented yet another blunder of monumental proportions, when more than one million people, trying to flee their city, were grounded in a traffic jam more than one hundred miles long. The authorities refused to open in-bound expressways for evacuation until it was too late.

            At the same time, the reserves of most gas stations quickly dried up, stranding thousands of motorists without water or sanitary provisions. Venezuelan President Chavez offered enough petroleum supplies to keep US vehicles operative during the crisis, but his generosity was snubbed by embarrassed Bush administration officials as “a propaganda ploy” from a “politically incorrect” source. As a consequence, Americans literally died on the roads, because they were unable to reach help.

            We err, however, in attributing all this criminal negligence and worse to a particular government or president. Bush and his fool’s regime of “Brownies” are ephemeral episodes in a social decay going back over generations of greed. Virtual annihilation of America’s oil-producing facilities across the Gulf has demonstrated the weakness of this “super power” with feet of clay. Its leaders and people have for too long been oil-junkies, hooked on an ultimately finite source of energy, easily manipulated for corporate profits, but vulnerable to attack from man or nature. It need never have been so.

            More than one hundred years ago, an American genius, F.O. Stanley, created a practical, steam-powered car. But he and his invention were ruthlessly undermined and ultimately destroyed by oil company magnates and executives of gas-powered automobile firms, whose petroleum investments were threatened by the “Stanley Steamer.” If the technology of that maligned invention had been allowed to freely develop over the last eleven decades, US dependence on oil would not exist. Again, materialism translated itself into disaster.

            Tragically, it has all happened before, underscoring Oswald Spengler’s theory of history, which the great German scholar defined as analogous to the life of a single human being. Civilisations, like mortal men, are born, mature, flourish, decline and die. As the mirror-image between ancient Atlantis and modern America becomes evermore clear, feelings of awful familiarity intensify. Only such a recognition can shake us awake. In other words, when we finally realise that WE are the Atlanteans.  

_________________________________________________________________________________
Frank Joseph is the editor-in-chief of Ancient American, a bi-monthly, popular science magazine describing overseas visitors to the Americas centuries before Columbus. His books Survivors of Atlantis and Destruction of Atlantis resulted from Joseph’s world travels in search of clues to the ancient past. He is a member of The Oriental Institute at the University of Illinois (USA) and Japan’s Savant Society. Joseph lives in Colfax, Wisconsin, USA.