Hurricane Katrina struck 5 years ago and time sure has flown. “Katrina” now has become an instantly identifiable proper noun with no modifier needed.

There were two Katrinas – the direct hurricane hit that devastated the Gulf coast, damaging or destroying more than 94,000 homes in Mississippi’s three coastal counties alone — Jackson, Harrison and Hancock. This largely has been forgotten.

And then there was the fringe of that storm that caused Lake Ponchartrain and the New Orleans canal system to rise in a frenzy, leading to the collapse of some floodwalls and the inundation of the city. And that is the part of the story that will survive into eternity – the destruction of an entire American metropolis in just a few short hours, in slow motion.

Indeed with the failure of just two wall sections, it was curtains for a city that had been nervously coexisting with a high-water threat for hundreds of years. New Orleans was built in a vulnerable, low spot and even the earliest histories discussed its exposure. Eventually, time and nature caught up when only two barriers failed. That was enough however. The downtown and the famous French Quarter are on higher ground and survived, but much of the rest of the city has passed into history, probably permanently.

We all remember the images of water thundering in in a torrent, a city suddenly submerged in stunningly short order as if it could not be a real event, thousands of residents fleeing on rafts and boats or slogging through the waist-deep deluge, shots fired at looters, 50,000 people trapped at the Superdome, stranded victims waving towels from rooftops, and the iconic photograph of president George W. Bush surveying the damage from Air Force One but not landing to see the disaster firsthand.

Soon that image was burned into the public psyche as that of a president detached from the tragedy. Then the bungling by the Federal Emergency Management Agency bureaucracy also was laid at the doorstep of Bush, and his popularity plummeted along with the fortunes of the Iraq war.

Of course Bush has been blamed for everything from ‘global warming’ to the peach shortage, but in fact it was the city fathers of New Orleans who were long-term negligent in the first place. The Democrat-controlled Big Easy was for more than a century perhaps the most corrupt city in America and the neglect of its own levees and floodwalls was notorious as city officials and a big, dependent population stole the till blind with greed and sloth.

Yes, indeed, New Orleans is a striking example of what total Democrat control produces – chaos and collapse. New Orleans long has been considered “lost” in myriad ways, with a listless black population prepared to scream ‘racism’ at the drop of a hat, but paid off with leviathan handouts to shut up. Then at the moment of crisis, those same people found out the lie they had been living. They were betrayed in every way by their own leaders in the city’s government. One of the most telling images was the rows and rows of submerged yellow schoolbuses that could have taken people out of harm’s way as the disaster loomed, but didn’t.

Indeed a culture of apathy, corruption and dependency is what killed much of New Orleans long ago.  Katrina just finished the job.

Of course, the same Ancient Media that trashed George Bush over his failure to land in New Orleans was the first outlet to attempt to excuse president Obama’s inept response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Yet public opinion has wounded Obama severely over the spill, which shows that the media no longer manipulate public opinion at will any more. That is a very good thing.

And looky here! Bush’s popularity is now equal to Obama’s! Does that make Obama the worst person in history too? Are Americans now willing to cut Bush a little slack over Katrina now that they have someone to compare him to? And now that the Iraq war has been largely won?

Let’s hope so.

It certainly was uplifting to see the New Orleans Saints win the Super Bowl last Winter and to see the city reborn just a little bit, like shoots in the Spring. But New Orleans as previously configured ain’t coming back, ever. The fleeing population never even returned to get their stuff. Because it all was ruined. Like the whole mystique of New Orleans itself.

So what are the lessons of Katrina?

It is several things:

First, don’t let corrupt Democrats tell you that everything is under control. Because it never is and they only can cover it up when they have a flow of Other People’s Money into the right pockets.

Second, things happen. New Orleans whistled past the graveyard for 300 years with the flood threat. Finally, they faced an end that was not necessarily unexpected.

Third, it is the party and policies of Obama that slowly killed New Orleans.

And fourth, the most likely city for the next Katrina-type disaster is Sacramento, California which lies in a low spot in central California at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers. With California’s reputation for Democrat control and unyielding corruption, you can trust that money for upkeep of the levees around Sacramento is not ending up in the right hands.

Katrina was like a 9/11 of nature with man’s own apathy and greed tossed in. And don’t be surprised if we see a similar situation in California someday soon. With the Golden State‘s earthquakes, or a heavy snow melt in the mountains, along with man-made corruption, the convergence of forces could inundate Sacramento in ways eerily similar to the denouement in the Big Easy. But one thing is very different – in the case of Sacramento, we can’t say that we haven’t been warned.

Please visit my website at www.nikitas3.com for more. You can print out for free my book, Right Is Right, which explains why only conservatism can maintain our freedom and prosperity.