Save the Really Important People

Last weekend I was at a political event in Malibu where a woman named Paradise asked a member of Congress to do what he could to protect the dolphins and whales that are becoming casualties to U.S. Navy sonar radar tests. I have a strong feeling that Paradise is going to have to add “Save the Humans” to the list of grievances. Today we have learned what many expected for so long; there is a shadow government of really important people that the federal government has tapped to be the sole survivors in case something very bad (think nuclear) hits the U.S. capital.
Are you starting to get a very strong impression that we are living in a two-tiered society, one for the executive level that knows when to cash in its shares of Enron stock or enter the Cheney bunkers and the other for us poor souls holding useless stock and standing outside the bunkers? The insiders, those high-ranking officials who are part of the underground government “would try to contain disruptions of the nation’s food and water supplies, transportation links, energy and telecommunications networks, public health and civil order. Later it would begin to reconstitute the government” (Washington Post, 3/1). In case there is a run on survivor space, the Post “agreed to a White House request not to name any of those deployed or identify the two principal locations of the shadow government.” This is definitely not another Blue Light special. How many people are we talking about with all that responsibility to run the country the day after disaster? Roughly the size of our U.S. Senate, although in this case the representation for the shadow government is from the executive branch only, not the Congress or the judiciary. (Sorry, Rep. Barbara Lee.)