YABSFHKT - Yet Another Blame Someone For Hurricane Katrina Thread

[bamacre]

I have come to the simple conclusion that the effects of Katrina have proven yet again that we as Americans have become a blame-someone-for-our-ills society. A society that refuses to see the fault within ourselves. A society that feeds on courts, lawsuits, finger-pointing, all due to our own self-hate.

Wow, what a complete and total mess. A once-beautiful city, almost totally destroyed. Destroyed by water, fire, wind, and rain.

Who do we blame? You cannot blame God. No, not to the point some would want. Can you put God, or Mother Nature, on the stand? Ring Him up on charges of mass murder, destruction of private and public property? Bring forth piles of documents proving Him to be the cause of this destruction? Slap Him into an electric chair, insert a lethal injection, put Him on a rope and hang Him from a tree?

No.

So the fingers get pointed elsewhere. They get pointed at him, and him, and her, and her, this office, that office, this party, that party, this organization, and that organization. They get pointed every single place but where the fingers deserve to be pointed. And that is at me and you.

We have become so dependent on someone else. We have no responsibilities for ourselves whatsoever. Zero. No matter what we have done wrong, we can always find someone else on which to blame. I see it in here, on these forums, I see it in our corporate world, I see it in our government, locally and federally, I see it outside of my home, in my city, in your city. I saw it on the faces of those standing on their rooftoops, prisoners in their own homes, demanding their government send them food and water, demanding someone come get them and take them away. And, I often see it in my own mirror.

What would happen to you if your local gas stations ran out of gas? Your grocery stores ran out of food? Your whole city loses electricity, and there is very little contact with the rest of the world? What if no one came to help? Would you be able to stay in business? Still have a job? Have food and water? Would you even survive? I fear one day, decades from now, a loss of a luxory like an internet connection could mean lives lost. Hell, right now, I can't even jerk it without an internet connection. Some people couldn't get a date, or even a wife, if it were not for an internet connection.

We have become so dependent on things such as gasoline, electricity, and computers, that we have forgotten how to fvcking walk.

Is it wrong? Have we screwed up? Should we go back to the days of wells in our back yards? Should we go back to the days of not even having back yards? Horses and carriages?

I don't know. I know I'm not ready to. This is the life we have chosen for ourselves. It was our choice, it's still our choice. It has its ups and it has its downs. We praise ourselves during the ups. We feel all high and mighty in our Honda Civics, when we eat our cavier, or McDonald's cheeseburgers and french fries and coca cola. We have our beer emoticons, our 500kbs pornographic freeway, our 7800 GTX's (in SLI of course).

But when the negative effects of our freely, and self-chosen way of life come around, we really cannot handle it. We'll sue someone for millions in a court of law, we'll drop the MOAB's and kill hundred's of thousands of people, we'll point our fingers at every fvcking person in the entire world. We'll do everything except look in the mirror. We'll do everything except point that finger at ourselves. We are so afraid to die that we cannot even live.

It's us on those rooftops, it's us surrounded by 10 feet of water. It's us screaming for food to eat and water to drink. Maybe not today, but maybe tomorrow. Maybe you don't live in the path of a hurricane, or a tornado, maybe you don't live in the path of an erupting volcano, or on a fault line, maybe you don't live on a piece of land destined to fall into the ocean. But you and I live on a path that ends in death. It's the only thing we didn't choose. Everything else, and I mean everythting, leading up to it was our own choice. Accept it.

 

[PELarson]

Mother Nature for the storm

Local and State government where they fouled up and there will be plenty of foulups when everything is told. City for not planning a volunteer, ie... organizing groups of maybe single unfettered men and women who have some basic training in driving a bus, once they decided to use the planned for and designated last resort shelters they had crews, made up of refugees in the centers and working with police bring in extra water and food supplies.

FEMA for the FUBAR'd disaster relief. For not following the plan. There was 2+ days to get the people moving, including heavy lifting healicopters that could haul and lower pallets of food and water to people who are isolated.

Brown for being a total f*ckup. Five freakin' hours after the storm he activates people in FEMA. For being a political appointment who didn't learn their job. I have no problem putting a political appointee in the job but dangit' learn the basics of the job and hire good subordinates.

The President -

1 - Staying on vactation. That tells me he doesn't care for America or its citizens. All he had to do was return to DC and be a presence.
2 - Not calling the VP and Cabinet back.
3 - Not knowing what was occurring with the storm after receiving warnings of its strength.
etc.
4 - Not doing his job as President. Lead g'dmit lead.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: bamacre
I have come to the simple conclusion that the effects of Katrina have proven yet again that we as Americans have become a blame-someone-for-our-ills society. A society that refuses to see the fault within ourselves. A society that feeds on courts, lawsuits, finger-pointing, all due to our own self-hate.

Wow, what a complete and total mess. A once-beautiful city, almost totally destroyed. Destroyed by water, fire, wind, and rain.

Who do we blame? You cannot blame God. No, not to the point some would want. Can you put God, or Mother Nature, on the stand? Ring Him up on charges of mass murder, destruction of private and public property? Bring forth piles of documents proving Him to be the cause of this destruction? Slap Him into an electric chair, insert a lethal injection, put Him on a rope and hang Him from a tree?

No.

So the fingers get pointed elsewhere. They get pointed at him, and him, and her, and her, this office, that office, this party, that party, this organization, and that organization. They get pointed every single place but where the fingers deserve to be pointed. And that is at me and you.

We have become so dependent on someone else. We have no responsibilities for ourselves whatsoever. Zero. No matter what we have done wrong, we can always find someone else on which to blame. I see it in here, on these forums, I see it in our corporate world, I see it in our government, locally and federally, I see it outside of my home, in my city, in your city. I saw it on the faces of those standing on their rooftoops, prisoners in their own homes, demanding their government send them food and water, demanding someone come get them and take them away. And, I often see it in my own mirror.

What would happen to you if your local gas stations ran out of gas? Your grocery stores ran out of food? Your whole city loses electricity, and there is very little contact with the rest of the world? What if no one came to help? Would you be able to stay in business? Still have a job? Have food and water? Would you even survive? I fear one day, decades from now, a loss of a luxory like an internet connection could mean lives lost. Hell, right now, I can't even jerk it without an internet connection. Some people couldn't get a date, or even a wife, if it were not for an internet connection.

We have become so dependent on things such as gasoline, electricity, and computers, that we have forgotten how to fvcking walk.

Is it wrong? Have we screwed up? Should we go back to the days of wells in our back yards? Should we go back to the days of not even having back yards? Horses and carriages?

I don't know. I know I'm not ready to. This is the life we have chosen for ourselves. It was our choice, it's still our choice. It has its ups and it has its downs. We praise ourselves during the ups. We feel all high and mighty in our Honda Civics, when we eat our cavier, or McDonald's cheeseburgers and french fries and coca cola. We have our beer emoticons, our 500kbs pornographic freeway, our 7800 GTX's (in SLI of course).

But when the negative effects of our freely, and self-chosen way of life come around, we really cannot handle it. We'll sue someone for millions in a court of law, we'll drop the MOAB's and kill hundred's of thousands of people, we'll point our fingers at every fvcking person in the entire world. We'll do everything except look in the mirror. We'll do everything except point that finger at ourselves. We are so afraid to die that we cannot even live.

It's us on those rooftops, it's us surrounded by 10 feet of water. It's us screaming for food to eat and water to drink. Maybe not today, but maybe tomorrow. Maybe you don't live in the path of a hurricane, or a tornado, maybe you don't live in the path of an erupting volcano, or on a fault line, maybe you don't live on a piece of land destined to fall into the ocean. But you and I live on a path that ends in death. It's the only thing we didn't choose. Everything else, and I mean everythting, leading up to it was our own choice. Accept it.

So you are saying only the rich deserve amenities, all others Fvk off and die???

 

[Rainsford]

I've been thinking about the "blame others" mentality we have, and while I believe much of it is unfounded, some of it is a natural and understandable extension of our society. Not because we have somehow lost our guiding principles, but because we really are a society where every individual HAS to rely on many other people. The idea of the rugged individualist is simply not very possible for many people.

But as the OP suggests, maybe THIS is the problem. It's not that we're somehow just whining, our system really does mean we have trouble just taking care of ourselves without any help. Is this a bad thing? Well in a natural disaster like Katrina it certainly is, but it is also what makes our society able to accomplish so much.

Look at history and what's been accomplished in various time periods. For a great deal of history, progress was slow, because people didn't really form the tightly dependent kind of society we have today. For the vast majority of history, people pretty much took care of all their needs. Sure, there were some specialists, but most people knew how to do those things themselves anyways. But as soon as there was more of a focus on doing what you were good at and relying on other people to do the same, things just took off. I've heard people say that the world advanced more in the last 100 years than in all the rest of human history, and it's easy to see why they think that.

Ah, but have we really advanced? I can see places I would never have been able to thanks to air travel. I can access information that past scholars would have given their lives for thanks to the internet. But fundamentally, I can't really take care of all my needs anymore. I don't know how to hunt, or raise crops, because society as a whole gains more if I focus on my job (which I'm VERY good at ) while farmers focus on their jobs. We've gained something, but we've lost something too.

Now, the billion dollar question, are we worse off? Well our system is certainly more brittle, even 150 years ago, everyone could fend for themselves, so destroying a city infrastructure wouldn't have the same kind of effect it does today. But it's really a question of tradeoffs. We gave up our individualism in a large part because we can accomplish more working together, and I think it's worth it. Because I can see the future and the great things it will bring, medical science helping people never get sick, travel to other planets, cheap, renewable energy for everyone, enough food to feed the hungry, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. And the tradeoff is simply the price of those advances, nothing great ever comes without cost. We could be safe as individuals, or we could work together and really see what we can do.

 

[Czar]

actually you can blame god, and sue god

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268437/ great movie

 

[azilaga]

More material to read for those in this blame game...

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05254/568876.stm

 

[imported_Condor]

Originally posted by: bamacre
I have come to the simple conclusion that the effects of Katrina have proven yet again that we as Americans have become a blame-someone-for-our-ills society. A society that refuses to see the fault within ourselves. A society that feeds on courts, lawsuits, finger-pointing, all due to our own self-hate.

Wow, what a complete and total mess. A once-beautiful city, almost totally destroyed. Destroyed by water, fire, wind, and rain.

Who do we blame? You cannot blame God. No, not to the point some would want. Can you put God, or Mother Nature, on the stand? Ring Him up on charges of mass murder, destruction of private and public property? Bring forth piles of documents proving Him to be the cause of this destruction? Slap Him into an electric chair, insert a lethal injection, put Him on a rope and hang Him from a tree?

No.

So the fingers get pointed elsewhere. They get pointed at him, and him, and her, and her, this office, that office, this party, that party, this organization, and that organization. They get pointed every single place but where the fingers deserve to be pointed. And that is at me and you.

We have become so dependent on someone else. We have no responsibilities for ourselves whatsoever. Zero. No matter what we have done wrong, we can always find someone else on which to blame. I see it in here, on these forums, I see it in our corporate world, I see it in our government, locally and federally, I see it outside of my home, in my city, in your city. I saw it on the faces of those standing on their rooftoops, prisoners in their own homes, demanding their government send them food and water, demanding someone come get them and take them away. And, I often see it in my own mirror.

What would happen to you if your local gas stations ran out of gas? Your grocery stores ran out of food? Your whole city loses electricity, and there is very little contact with the rest of the world? What if no one came to help? Would you be able to stay in business? Still have a job? Have food and water? Would you even survive? I fear one day, decades from now, a loss of a luxory like an internet connection could mean lives lost. Hell, right now, I can't even jerk it without an internet connection. Some people couldn't get a date, or even a wife, if it were not for an internet connection.

We have become so dependent on things such as gasoline, electricity, and computers, that we have forgotten how to fvcking walk.

Is it wrong? Have we screwed up? Should we go back to the days of wells in our back yards? Should we go back to the days of not even having back yards? Horses and carriages?

I don't know. I know I'm not ready to. This is the life we have chosen for ourselves. It was our choice, it's still our choice. It has its ups and it has its downs. We praise ourselves during the ups. We feel all high and mighty in our Honda Civics, when we eat our cavier, or McDonald's cheeseburgers and french fries and coca cola. We have our beer emoticons, our 500kbs pornographic freeway, our 7800 GTX's (in SLI of course).

But when the negative effects of our freely, and self-chosen way of life come around, we really cannot handle it. We'll sue someone for millions in a court of law, we'll drop the MOAB's and kill hundred's of thousands of people, we'll point our fingers at every fvcking person in the entire world. We'll do everything except look in the mirror. We'll do everything except point that finger at ourselves. We are so afraid to die that we cannot even live.

It's us on those rooftops, it's us surrounded by 10 feet of water. It's us screaming for food to eat and water to drink. Maybe not today, but maybe tomorrow. Maybe you don't live in the path of a hurricane, or a tornado, maybe you don't live in the path of an erupting volcano, or on a fault line, maybe you don't live on a piece of land destined to fall into the ocean. But you and I live on a path that ends in death. It's the only thing we didn't choose. Everything else, and I mean everythting, leading up to it was our own choice. Accept it.

Blame isn't as simple as you wish it were, nothing ever is. Liberals just keep missing that point. The concept is that you fix what causes a problem. Can't fix the 'cane, those happen. Can fix the people, engineering and planning though. Can only do that if you isolate the problem down to what or who is to blame. People without transportion in the inner city because they can't afford cars or were suckered into the liberal Public Transportation mantra is one issue, The liberal welfare state concentrating poor people into urban areas and making them wards of a state that can't care for them is one, Governor and Mayor being worthless political hacks is another, concrete walls instead of decent levees is one, federal response being slow and bogged down in bureaucracy in one, liberals that blind themselves to the real problems in their lust to blame a President that beat their contender twice is possibly the worst. Only they can fix the last one. All we can do is to keep voting Republican and hope for the best.

 

[OrByte]

Originally posted by: Condor

Originally posted by: bamacre
I have come to the simple conclusion that the effects of Katrina have proven yet again that we as Americans have become a blame-someone-for-our-ills society. A society that refuses to see the fault within ourselves. A society that feeds on courts, lawsuits, finger-pointing, all due to our own self-hate.

Wow, what a complete and total mess. A once-beautiful city, almost totally destroyed. Destroyed by water, fire, wind, and rain.

Who do we blame? You cannot blame God. No, not to the point some would want. Can you put God, or Mother Nature, on the stand? Ring Him up on charges of mass murder, destruction of private and public property? Bring forth piles of documents proving Him to be the cause of this destruction? Slap Him into an electric chair, insert a lethal injection, put Him on a rope and hang Him from a tree?

No.

So the fingers get pointed elsewhere. They get pointed at him, and him, and her, and her, this office, that office, this party, that party, this organization, and that organization. They get pointed every single place but where the fingers deserve to be pointed. And that is at me and you.

We have become so dependent on someone else. We have no responsibilities for ourselves whatsoever. Zero. No matter what we have done wrong, we can always find someone else on which to blame. I see it in here, on these forums, I see it in our corporate world, I see it in our government, locally and federally, I see it outside of my home, in my city, in your city. I saw it on the faces of those standing on their rooftoops, prisoners in their own homes, demanding their government send them food and water, demanding someone come get them and take them away. And, I often see it in my own mirror.

What would happen to you if your local gas stations ran out of gas? Your grocery stores ran out of food? Your whole city loses electricity, and there is very little contact with the rest of the world? What if no one came to help? Would you be able to stay in business? Still have a job? Have food and water? Would you even survive? I fear one day, decades from now, a loss of a luxory like an internet connection could mean lives lost. Hell, right now, I can't even jerk it without an internet connection. Some people couldn't get a date, or even a wife, if it were not for an internet connection.

We have become so dependent on things such as gasoline, electricity, and computers, that we have forgotten how to fvcking walk.

Is it wrong? Have we screwed up? Should we go back to the days of wells in our back yards? Should we go back to the days of not even having back yards? Horses and carriages?

I don't know. I know I'm not ready to. This is the life we have chosen for ourselves. It was our choice, it's still our choice. It has its ups and it has its downs. We praise ourselves during the ups. We feel all high and mighty in our Honda Civics, when we eat our cavier, or McDonald's cheeseburgers and french fries and coca cola. We have our beer emoticons, our 500kbs pornographic freeway, our 7800 GTX's (in SLI of course).

But when the negative effects of our freely, and self-chosen way of life come around, we really cannot handle it. We'll sue someone for millions in a court of law, we'll drop the MOAB's and kill hundred's of thousands of people, we'll point our fingers at every fvcking person in the entire world. We'll do everything except look in the mirror. We'll do everything except point that finger at ourselves. We are so afraid to die that we cannot even live.

It's us on those rooftops, it's us surrounded by 10 feet of water. It's us screaming for food to eat and water to drink. Maybe not today, but maybe tomorrow. Maybe you don't live in the path of a hurricane, or a tornado, maybe you don't live in the path of an erupting volcano, or on a fault line, maybe you don't live on a piece of land destined to fall into the ocean. But you and I live on a path that ends in death. It's the only thing we didn't choose. Everything else, and I mean everythting, leading up to it was our own choice. Accept it.

Blame isn't as simple as you wish it were, nothing ever is. Liberals just keep missing that point. The concept is that you fix what causes a problem. Can't fix the 'cane, those happen. Can fix the people, engineering and planning though. Can only do that if you isolate the problem down to what or who is to blame. People without transportion in the inner city because they can't afford cars or were suckered into the liberal Public Transportation mantra is one issue, The liberal welfare state concentrating poor people into urban areas and making them wards of a state that can't care for them is one, Governor and Mayor being worthless political hacks is another, concrete walls instead of decent levees is one, federal response being slow and bogged down in bureaucracy in one, liberals that blind themselves to the real problems in their lust to blame a President that beat their contender twice is possibly the worst. Only they can fix the last one. All we can do is to keep voting Republican and hope for the best.

only point you made is turning this thread partisan.

don't get upset, just reread what you typed.

 

[OrByte]

Originally posted by: Rainsford
I've been thinking about the "blame others" mentality we have, and while I believe much of it is unfounded, some of it is a natural and understandable extension of our society. Not because we have somehow lost our guiding principles, but because we really are a society where every individual HAS to rely on many other people. The idea of the rugged individualist is simply not very possible for many people.

But as the OP suggests, maybe THIS is the problem. It's not that we're somehow just whining, our system really does mean we have trouble just taking care of ourselves without any help. Is this a bad thing? Well in a natural disaster like Katrina it certainly is, but it is also what makes our society able to accomplish so much.

Look at history and what's been accomplished in various time periods. For a great deal of history, progress was slow, because people didn't really form the tightly dependent kind of society we have today. For the vast majority of history, people pretty much took care of all their needs. Sure, there were some specialists, but most people knew how to do those things themselves anyways. But as soon as there was more of a focus on doing what you were good at and relying on other people to do the same, things just took off. I've heard people say that the world advanced more in the last 100 years than in all the rest of human history, and it's easy to see why they think that.

Ah, but have we really advanced? I can see places I would never have been able to thanks to air travel. I can access information that past scholars would have given their lives for thanks to the internet. But fundamentally, I can't really take care of all my needs anymore. I don't know how to hunt, or raise crops, because society as a whole gains more if I focus on my job (which I'm VERY good at ) while farmers focus on their jobs. We've gained something, but we've lost something too.

Now, the billion dollar question, are we worse off? Well our system is certainly more brittle, even 150 years ago, everyone could fend for themselves, so destroying a city infrastructure wouldn't have the same kind of effect it does today. But it's really a question of tradeoffs. We gave up our individualism in a large part because we can accomplish more working together, and I think it's worth it. Because I can see the future and the great things it will bring, medical science helping people never get sick, travel to other planets, cheap, renewable energy for everyone, enough food to feed the hungry, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. And the tradeoff is simply the price of those advances, nothing great ever comes without cost. We could be safe as individuals, or we could work together and really see what we can do.

I like your post. I think you need to throw into your mix the economic conditions of today. Welfare classes and dependancy, and on the other end of the spectrum, the wealthy. Individualism, as you put it, is effected by economic means. I think that is the problem, just my .02