Turning Bad/Falling Down

I believe you are slightly misinformed. New Orleans hid a tragic level of abject poverty before "Burning" started using it as "a good day out".

Try telling your story to the extortionist git in the builder's merchants who charged me double for half a wind-damaged ladder just to get some cover on our roof in The Great Danish Storm of '99.

Try telling that to the middle class arseholes looting the supermarkets of trolleys full of bottled water, bread and milk when the lights were still turned off. Have supermarkets not heard of rationing supplies?

Tell that to the tank fillers at all the petrol stations in town when there was only a rumour of shortages.

No hardware store in town? Then forget all about gas cylinders for your camping stove to warm your last tin of beans on the shelf of your larder as you huddle in duvets.

The thin skin of civilisation and all that...

I know about the crime etc in NO prior to the disaster. It’s bloody obvious when you visit the city.

You missed the point though, even with the poverty etc, there was no WIDESPREAD chaos WITH looting, raping, murder ETC. Just because the community is devastated and the authorities incapacitated or what ever, not only the bad elements have started to run rampaged but also the so called ordinary folks have turned bad. This must have occurred, law of nature etc, opportunistic crimes etc.

Like you say "thin skin of civilisation" huh?

I live in hope, however. I am damn sure to be disappointed, sadly. We as a civilisation probably will no longer exist if the current path continues to be “trodden on”. Let the worthy inherit this planet i.e. the animals, at least they do not pretend to be civilised!

One might suggest that many poor New Orleaners were suppressed in a pressure-cooker existence. Resentment must have been boiling for centuries.

Temporarily remove the hated police who represent the "haves". And who may well represent denial of their simplest needs and it all goes pear-shaped. I wonder whether this didn't figure in the thinking of the many police officers who decided it wasn't worth further effort in keeping the lid on things and left.

There is no free lunch. You cannot be wealthy without dehumanising others in your mind. You cannot be "comfortable" without the obligatory blinkers.

I remember an American pen-friend from Alabama decades ago. He contacted me after my letter was published in a science magazine. He was generous in sending me science magazines and we exchanged letters regularly about our interests.

A professional with his own business. Living in a sprawling mansion in wonderful surroundings by anybody's standards. Everybody in the family had their own new car. His kids were being expensively educated and I was sent pictures of his beautiful daughters wearing expensive ballgowns to sumptuous parties. They had regular holidays in exotic places. The perfect American family living life The American Way.

But it wasn't enough that he had all this and more. I stopped writing when he started calling blacks "Porch Monkies" and raving endlessly about "their" comfortable lifestyles on welfare at his expense. The real irony was that he was an optometrist. But he just couldn't see his own folly. The perfect apple on the surface was riddled with the gnawing worms of racial hatred and intolerance beneath the skin.

Nime I read your post and my heart worries about the survivability of our species. With such views as you have written, only one of the many follies we all have, are we all doomed? Can we not be reasonable? Can we not be tollerant of the "have nots" (not just with regards to money)? How would we want to be treated when the role is reversed?

Wellspyder/Nime

At times like this it's easy to see the worst in people and lose some faith in humankind.

What may not be reported so extensively in Europe though are the countless humanitarian stories and the extraordinary lengths that both individuals and groups of people have gone in order to help they fellow citizens.

The US has many faults (as do all countries) but the massive outpouring of support, financial, physical and sriritual, far outweighs the crimes that were committed by those left behind. Indeed, many of those looting were doing so in order to simply survive as the rules change when something like this happens.

Unfortunately Nime, bigoted idiots like your ex-penfriend do exist but I have to believe that they are in the minority.

Jim

Is anyone watching Sky News?

A long history of police brutality and corruption in New Orleans. A long history of corruption in the local authorities. A town run by the mafia. The frustration of being poor and black in New Orleans is not going to be repaired with the banks and nice homes in the suburbs getting the highest priority.

The army have been brought in to guard middle class homes and businesses. They are ignoring bodies in the water. Denying responsibility for rescued members of the public as they sit on their fat arses smoking in large groups in a town full of people too ill and now too weak to leave their homes. And the weak couldn't leave if they wanted to with water still filling the streets.

An officer said on camera that he could have had hundreds of helicopters over the town within 6 hours. It took 36 hours to get permission for 3! I wonder if he'll be court marshalled for telling the simple truth?

I wish I could share your optimism about minorities receiving fair treatment in the USA Jim.

in a lot of small towns down south thier attitudes about blacks and Hispanics is just horrible. Thankfully there are many people able to help and try to restore order.

I had a partner years ago (2 decades now, oh my!)that didn't understand why I had my friend James over for beers, and go to movies with, as he was black and raised in San Antonio TX. Problem was James had more education and understanding than the business partner at the time. The partnership ran it's course long before my friendship with James ended. The ex partner was raised in the south and had deeply set attitudes that I found offensive and limiting. Take people at deeper than face value. You might find some interesting and different points of view.

glenn

I keep wondering if the local NO cops legged it simply because they could no longer call for armed back-up to protect themselves from being put in harm's way. You wouldn't want a level swimming pool would you?