The Third World Comes to America

While watching the TV News last night on New Orleans looting and lawlessness, it occurred to me that many people will see their own point of view playing out on their TVs. I was chilled by the thought of all the people sitting in their easy chairs waiting on what most of the world would see as a banquet fit for several families. I could hear the sanctimonious comments of the suburban Bush supporter saying how entitled the low lifes of the inner city sounded and how their neighbors were behaving like uncivilized natives by looting and pillaging the largely abandoned city.
Here were the residents of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans without the resources to even evacuate commenting for the cameras how angry they were about how the government had abandoned them. Then followed images of looters carrying more than just food and water out of the ransacked stores. Then there were the dead bodies covered in dirty tattered blankets. Almost everyone shown in those images were African American.
They did indeed sound indignant that the government hadn't swooped in to rescue them. At first glance, it seemed an inappropriate response. Then the stories of people angry with the rescuers, frustrated with too little too late. Then hearing of those shooting at rescuing helicopters, and robbing and raping tourists who wandered near, how confusing it all was, how could people behave like that?
Then it dawned at me that these people have been without food or water for four days! They had been without shelter in the hot sun in heat well into the 90s wading through flood waters contaminated by sewage. They had seen little or no effort of help coming their way. All signs were that they had been abandoned as they watched their elders and youngest die of drowning, dehydration and heat stroke.
Imagining myself in that setting, when I see my neighbors looting the grocery stores for food and water, I'd wonder if I waited would their be anything left for my family. You'd bet I'd join in. Then seeing no sign of relief, I'd wonder if civilization had crumbled. Seeing looters, roving men with guns, and all sorts of spontaneous violence, I'd be looking for a way to arm myself. Stealing a gun would be on my mind.
I could easily imagine lots of my neighbors indulging in grabbing other valuables from stores, thinking they weren't going to see a paycheck for a long time, they may well need to fence some goods to just to get by in coming months. If I had no cash reserve, nothing of my own to sell to support myself, would I be tempted to join in? How many of us would? Now with gangs, hoodlums, and rampant deprived and unsupervised teenagers ruling the streets, how could anyone imagine sitting and waiting patiently for relief to come?
The poor have no cash reserves, welfare rolls won't allow it. The working poor don't make enough income to afford housing, food and health care much less savings. When they see the only infrastructure they've every known crumble before them, their neighborhood, family, and government, I can conceive of such drastic methods of survival could quickly come about.
Yet without understanding all of this, the average suburban Bush supporter just sees the chaos and the black faces and concludes the inner city isn't worth saving. Why should their taxes go to pay for handouts to these low lifes? Prejudice never died in this country, it just allied itself with the greedy, Rightwing religion and the secular morality of individualism and personal responsibility. So often good ideas like personal responsibility take off not just because they are good ideas, but because they save a lot of money. Saving money becomes the incentive to over do a good thing.
Will this country learn anything from this chaos in New Orleans? I suspect the most we can hope for is lower poll results for Bush and his Republican cronies.
The world stands by and is shocked at the dirty underwear of the Americans. Our greatest flaw is how we treat our inner cities and the poor than live in them. The poor are one disaster away from the grinding third world poverty of Bangladesh.
BREITBART.COM

The world has watched amazed as the planet's only superpower struggles with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with some saying the chaos has exposed flaws and deep divisions in American society.


World leaders and ordinary citizens have expressed sympathy with the people of the southern United States whose lives were devastated by the hurricane and the flooding that followed.


But many have also been shocked by the images of disorder beamed around the world -- looters roaming the debris-strewn streets and thousands of people gathered in New Orleans waiting for the authorities to provide food, water and other aid.


"Anarchy in the USA" declared Britain's best-selling newspaper The Sun. "Apocalypse Now" headlined Germany's Handelsblatt daily. The pictures of the catastrophe -- which has killed hundreds and possibly thousands -- have evoked memories of crises in the world's poorest nations such as last year's tsunami in Asia, which left more than 230,000 people dead or missing.


But some view the response to those disasters more favorably than the lawless aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering," said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka. "Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is."

[...]
Commentators noted the victims of the hurricane were overwhelmingly African Americans, too poor to flee the region as the hurricane loomed unlike some of their white neighbors. New Orleans ranks fifth in the United States in terms of African American population and 67 percent of the city's residents are black. "In one of the poorest states in the country, where black people earn half as much as white people, this has taken on a racial dimension," said a report in Britain's Guardian daily.


Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, in a veiled criticism of U.S. political thought, said the disaster showed the need for a strong state that could help poor people.
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