Katrina Stupidity
Dean
Quote:
Remember all of this about Hurricane Katrina?
The destruction was the result of global warming. And it was made worse by too many troops off in Iraq. Endemic racism and neglected environmental legislation were as toxic as flood. Military assets were unused due to incompetence or heartlessness. The neglect of the victims was an indictment of a crass and uncaring society.
But none of that ad hoc "analysis" proved conclusive.
Yes, Hurricane Katrina revealed swearing, crying and stupefied public officials at all levels. Their initial paralysis may have endangered some lives.
But the media's coverage turned out to be almost as disturbing as the natural calamity and initial bureaucratic ineptness — in both the falsehood it spread and the truth it ignored. Political commentators proved more disturbing, seeking to turn death to partisan advantage.
Yep. But read the whole thing.
I go back to what I said on September 4: "in a month, most will be looking at how impressively fast the first responders were and how much good was done in so short a time period. All those claiming it was too slow will look just a little crazy--driven crazy by the 24 hour news cycle." I'm increasingly willing to stand by that.
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That saidk, it's clear that after the government reorganization that the Bush administration championed on the goal of improving national security, when we got hit with something of a huge scale bigger than anything we've seen in decades, Americans wanted to see faster response than they saw. It doesn't matter that it was faster than FEMA was normally expected to respond--clearly, Americans want faster when something really big happens.
The challenge: how to formulate that into a policy response.