After Katrina, How Can Our Leaders Sleep at Night?

[struggle4progress]

Commentary, Vu Duc Vuong,
Nguoi Viet, Oct 08, 2005

<snip> The question played over and over in one’s mind: Is this the U.S. of A? Is this for real? Are these Americans? And the knee-jerk follow-up: “Can’t someone DO something?” <snip>

We can intercept phone calls from anywhere across the globe, pinpoint a location, and if we want to, fire a smart missile from thousands of miles away and still hit the target in his bed or in her car.

We even landed several of our fellow Americans on the moon and brought them back safely.

Thus it was incomprehensible that 25,000 people, who listened to what the government told them and gathered under the protective roof of the Superdome, would live for days under the most gruesome conditions imaginable. <snip>

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=f1cc781b1a163f3e35a0a1e23d10b89e

[RC]

1. You've got to remember we are being ruled by a bunch of

lock step sociopaths driven by power and greed. Those were not rich white republicans in the Superdome.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Demeter]

3. Even So, I Doubt That They Are Sleeping Well, If At All

Reality is starting to burst that shining bubble.

[sadiesworld]

4. I have no words.

I posted very little during Katrina, I was (for once in a long while) glued to TV coverage. I kept thinking (over and over and over) "surely, help will arrive soon".

The few times I posted on DU I saw arguments about looting. I'm a fairly moderate DUer, but I just didn't get that.

[Skittles]

7. oh I was having fits

as a veteran I was screaming WHERE IS THE F***ING MILITARY ?? It was an abomination.

[AlphaCat]

5. In addition to everything else that went wrong...

...I think human psychology made it worse. Unless a similar catastrophe has happened within collective memory, people just don't think it'll happen to them. We deny the worst scenarios.

I live in the pacific northwest and, when we first moved here, we were surprised to find 'volcano evacuation zone' signs. But we've never had a volcano erupt in the continental United States, so I'm sure people drive by the signs and don't give them a second thought.

We just don't think Mt. Rainier will REALLY go off--and we know that kind of thinking isn't going to make us any safer--but it just isn't a part of our everyday thought processes. Perhaps our Pacific Islanders and Hawaiians are more realistic about it; the rest of us just hope against hope.

I don't see that changing much...

[ljm2002]

8. "But we've never had a volcano erupt..."

"... in the continental United States"

er... Mt. St. Helens?????

[AlphaCat]

9. ROFLMAO!

I don't know what I was thinking--OF COURSE Mt. St. Helens!!! I need another coupla bowls of Wheaties or SOMETHING! LOL!

Thanks for setting the record straight! (Boy, there'd better NOT be another one go off--as dumb as I am you can see how quickly I'll get buried!)

What's REALLY funny is that we don't live that far away from Mt. St. Helens--I could probably walk out the door and FALL over it!

This is just way TOO funny...
This AlphaCat is just one DumbBunny!

[Lisa]

11. well, that happened before CNN was around

Several weeks before they first went on air, in fact ...

http://edition.cnn.com/resources/video.almanac/1980/#helens


So to the current set of media pundits (and an amazingly-high percentage of the public) it might as well NOT have happened at all! I'm not kidding. I asked a class of college students (in their late teens and early 20s now) if they could tell me the approximate date of the eruption (to within a month), and most of them didn't know. They were also hazy on when the Berlin Wall came down.

I had visited the area within sight of the volcano in the late 1970s, and didn't actually go through there again until about 20 years after ... and I have to admit, I was actually looking around thinking, "something's different -- I wonder what?"

Maybe they ought to put up big warning markers warning both of us "don't fall into the caldera", or something! (I live in the PNW now.)

[cassiepriam]

6. Sociopaths not capable of normal feelings, have a hole in their soul.

They are narcissistic and immature. Only get upset if their comfort is threatened.

[Porcupine]

10. Drug wars, health care, prisons. Trashing American lives is

policy for these people. How many families were destroyed because daddy had to go to jail on a pot charge? How many people are killed by our hit and miss health care system? We lose 40 thousand people a year killed just in auto accidents. They put death squad mercenaries (Blackwell) into New Orleans without blinking an eye.

They absolutely know that they are killing people and that they are hated for it. That is why Bush has the most paranoid security detail of all time. He is sure that he is a dead man if he walks the streets unprotected. Clinton walked into a crowd....in AFRICA!!!

[rustydog]

12. Don't you understand? They do NOT care what happened

and that is how they sleep at night.