Every place in America is safe until it isn’t.
Contrary to what you hear on the evening news, there aren’t places where crime is nonexistent, where nobody can hurt you, where the walls are so thick and the locks so strong that no one can reach you tonight.
Just because people say, when a terrible thing occurs in a rich neighborhood, that they didn’t think things like this could happen there … terrible things can happen anywhere.
What truly makes us less safe is our refusal to help one another. We become less able to go out into the world secure in the greatness of America each day we let our selfishness (and yes, this is selfishness, to hide behind a minor danger to oneself to avoid caring for others) be our guiding principle.
Our responsibility to one another is our only true security, and we devalue that, day by day, with rationales like Daniels’ and the rest of the Rockland school board’s.
Then again, perhaps I’m being too hard on Daniels, in the end. Perhaps all she intended in calling New Orleans a “war zone” was to compare it to Baghdad, Tikrit or Basra. Perhaps then, her thinking went, we could rally Americans in support of painting schools and building hospitals there and find billions of dollars in reconstruction money for it.
That seems to be the kind of war zone to which we have no problem sending our young people to pitch in.
A.
Excellent column A.
Selfishness.
Seems to be a theme.
A., I love you. What assholery! What fucking assholery out of Maine!
I have to add that I visit New Orleans at least once a month, and I’m still here, still alive, still kicking. It’s a Festivus miracle! I survived a war zone!
I have to add that I visit New Orleans at least once a month, and I’m still here, still alive, still kicking. It’s a Festivus miracle! I survived a war zone!
Herearefourposts I have on it, with minimal profanity!
Oh, and bitchin’ column, Athenae.
Excellent. Now how did the people in Maine GET the idea that it was a war zone?
Who is pushing that idea?
Yesterday I heard Pat Buchannan on the Chris Matthews show repeat as truth rumors about a Presidential candidates. And Matthews just joked about it.
When our pundits pay attention to what is happening in New Orleans will it be because of the “riots” at the city council where the police tasered the people protesting the destruction of building that would be repaired?
Not only did the government fall down on job with the New Orleans tragedy so did the media because they seem to only be able to do a handful of narratives at a time and they just do them over and over because that is what they know. If nobody is pushing a different “exciting” narrative or story well they revert to their usual. If I was in charge of PR for recovery for LA and NO I would be pushing all sorts of stories about the federal gov. problems and good stories about people who “beat the system” just to show how bad the system is and then focus on the state’s attorney General should be cranking out some serious indictments.
But what do I know? I’m just a brain in a box.
“For example in NOLA we had the story with Matt and Fix the Pumps. If the ATTY Gen was smart they could have road that story into some serious charges and got the right pumps in.
There are other interesting ongoing narratives but unless we push them the papers/journalist default to their coverage of disasters. They they get bored and move on. Instead of waiting for another “riot” in New Orleans the leverage needs to be focused on people who are screwing up the programs and who haven’t done what is necessary.
But what do I know? I’m just a brain in a box.
Splotchy atI, Splotchy has two posts up, here andhere, about going to NOLA on his second trip to do recovery work. Amazingly, he survived the war zone, twice.
“It’s a war zone” is white people’s code phrase for “There’s n*ggers down there!”. That’s a great lesson to teach those kids: Don’t help anybody unless they’re white like you. But who am I kidding? Our own government has the same attitude, that’s why a vast portion of New Orleans is still a disaster area almost 3 years after Katrina. You can goddamn rest assured that Southern California won’t take that long to rebuild after those wildfires.
The day I see heavy artillery, surface-to-air missiles, and land mines in use here is the day this place is a war zone. I haven’t come across any of those things at my local dog park, my son’s school, or the local stores. I haven’t even seen such things in the Ninth Ward.
I think we need to sic some mold on some of these misguided folks, however. Then they’ll WISH they were hit by bazookas…