Listen Now: Metta for the Powers that Be....
This meditation focuses on sending metta to the individuals who have been in charge, in control, of the relief efforts. The news has focused primarily on the ways that the U.S. Government and FEMA have failed to respond appropriately and rapidly enough to this crisis. (For instance- Canada arrived 5 days before FEMA to airlift people from homes and bring water, food, and supplies. If this is new information for you, I recommend listening to Amy Goodman's archived coverage of the days following the hurricane, on Democracy Now. Amy Goodman is a brilliant journalist, and Democracy Now, in my humble opinion, is the best source of news out there.)

Sending metta to people whom we believe have flailed around miserably in response to the tragedy is not an easy task, especially if we are habituated to thinking rather uncharitable thoughts of our president and his cronies. But my firm belief is that regardless of how far one has drifted from sanity or integrity, it is only through the transformation of loving kindness that any healing can occur. I don't particularly believe in punitive measures, though I don't think impeachment would be inappropriate.The way that we can get through this kind of harsh judgement and manage to send authentic loving kindness is to, first, grapple with the banality of evil- to understand that the actions which appear to be evil are typically actually an out growth of unconsciousness or numbness. So we first connect with ourselves, and the places in ourselves that are numbed out, the places where we ourselves have gone unconscious. And we send metta to ourselves. If we can do that, forgiving ourselves completely and wholly, then we can forgive anyone.