I’ve been following the events of the past week with disbelief as they unfolded. It is incredible to see one of the most well-known American towns become a cesspit of death, filthy water, and chaos, and many others completely wiped out. I read that the extent of the damage is about the equivilent of the entire United Kingdom. That is something that I can’t really comprehend. That is massive destruction.
I’ve been reading the news and watching news clips, and waited along with everyone else for a sign that people were quickly being evacuated. It has become a colossal disaster. The US Government has let its people down in the most atrocious of ways. No one should have to wait 6 days to be evacuated from the safe house-turned-hell hole survivors were dropped off at. No one in a supposed “first world” country, the richest and most powerful one at that, should have to wait days upon days for water. No one should be told that they have to flash their breasts to the “rescuers” to be evacuated from a flooded hotel. Officials should never evacuate people to an unsafe environment, where people steal from each other, rape women and children, and murder each other. Police should never skip town and/or go looting at Wal*Mart with everyone else. It is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. I feel so sorry for everyone affected. It is unimaginable.
I am with you on that, it has opened up a gaping pit and we now stare down at the terror of the possible.
I went to see Land of the Dead last week, and coming out of it my friend and I looked at each other and concluded that the scenario was quite close to what we had seen on the news earlier in the day. Not trying to make a tasteless comparison though, it just struck us.
That’s the problem with uniting under a flag – as soon as the flag picks up and leaves with its tail between its legs, society breaks down and everything turns to shit.
Time to reassess a culture that lets that happen.
Well said.
We now live in a world where every event becomes another way to bash the evils of the U.S. government, which has become the most cliche’ storyline of the modern age. It’s just a meme. I don’t know why everything went as badly as it did with Katrina, but I think some of it would have to be blamed on a natural disaster of horrific scale the likes of which you can never truly prepare for. I agree that all of those things you said were horrible, but the meme of “the American government is bad” is so overdone that I automatically tune out whenever anyone resorts to that. Maybe we could look at other reasons, like poverty, gangs, and just general thuggery and the evil that lurks within all of us. This same event could have happened in Manchester or Johannesburg, or Berlin. What we see here as someone pointed out earlier, is a total breakdown of society. We are all barbarians just barely held together by power grids, water supplies, sewage systems and laws of the land. Take all that away and we become snarling animals. I don’t think you can blame that on George Bush.
Yes, but remember, it was relatively calm until people realised no one was coming for them and they had no food, water, or medicine.
bush has no excuse and i am having a horrible time listening to people defend him. yes it was a natural disaster, but its not the first hurricane to hit our country. and if he has any questions, he can always as his brother, the lovely governor of florida, the state that gets at least two hurricanes a year. it was george bush’s long period of inaction that has angered everyone. he was quicker to nominate john roberts for cheif justice than to send some frickin water to the dying peoples of his country.
Well it’s not really as simple as “Bush should have come off his vacation and given these people water.” You guys are really naive!
I don’t want to turn this thread into another political debate, but my sister and bro in law live in New Orleans (St. Charles Parrish).
Anyway their take on it is that it’s mostly the fact that people broke down into sheer barbarism right after the power went out (BEFORE the flooding), as that caused the police to start quitting, then nobody was in charge. Secondly the local government was so disorganized that it took them forever to contact the Feds to ask for Federal Assistance. In the U.S., States still actually have to ask to have Federal Troops invade their cities, Bush could not just immediately send in the military. That is a good thing for those who care about civil liberties and states rights. Maybe in other countries there would have immediately been troops parachuting into the city with machine guns and rifles, but not the U.S. Anyway the Federal Assistance took a several days because the local government waited too long to notify the Feds. Beyond that, there are two damning pieces of evidence that blame the local government: thousands of school and municipal buses sat parked in giant parking lots, which according to plan were suppoed to have been used to evacuate people without their own transportation. These buses flooded on Tues but Sunday after the hurricane blew through, they could have taken these to the Superdome and loaded them up. The other thing is that the local government actually paid a video company to produce a DVD last summer saying “If a hurricane hits, poor people are on their own to fend for themselves”. This DVD was supposed to be shown at civic centers and community groups. It’s pretty damning.
Believe it or not, President Bush is not like a dictator, he does not personally control every single activity in the United States.
What you have to remember is New Orleans is a notoriously corrupt city in the first place. Of course finger pointing towards Bush was inevitable, but I mistrust the knee jerk reaction to blame him before looking anywhere else..
Blame can eventually be spread around but my take on it at this point is that it’s about 50 percent the fault of the looters and gang members who took advantage of the situation and started to shoot at Rescue Workers and local police. Then it’s about 20 percent the fault of the local police for adandoning their posts and trying to escape the city, when the poor people had no protection from these bad guys. Then it’s 20 percent he fault of the Mayor, the local government, and local businesses, zoning laws, etc. And it’s 8 percent the fault of capitalism for building a vast city inside of a bowl surrounded by water—I think it was a bad idea from the beginning. And it’s 2 percent the fault of the Feds.
thanks, fishie. sounds about right.
Hmhm, yes fishie, not too bad a take. Actually there is enough blame to spread for everyone.
Apart from the blame discussion, which I would close with a “ALL officials messed up” label, the frightening aspect to me is that what keeps people at bay over there is… the power supply?! The social situation must be unbearable if a natural desaster does not make people stand together in order to get over it, but step over each other in order to take advantage of it.
My spelling is a disaster too.
Oliver, your follow up was funny. I was using hyperbole about all that holds us together is stuff like running water, but at the same time, yes I think deep down we’re just one step away from barbarism. I don’t think this is simply a U.S.A. problem, I think there are examples of this kind of thing happening throughout history in other countries, too – even in recent years. Looting and violence happens when social structures break down all the time, but especially today. Here in the U.S., I think it’s a poverty issue mostly. People who are poor feel powerless and impotent, and sometimes that motivates people toward evil. That is not to excuse the people who were shooting at EMS workers trying to evacuate premature babies from an intensive care ward (that really did happen, disgusting).. but I think a lot of the rage comes from being impoverished and feeling suddenly like you have power.
There are many examples of people who come from poverty taking advantage of a social breakdown and using it to inflict great harm on other humans, so he can feel power over them finally.
Again, don’t think it’s a George Bush thing, I think it’s a human-beings-are-capable-of-evil thing. Just my opinion though.