No Such Thing as a Golden Chariot

I have overeard many discussions at my bar about Hurricane Katrina, the aftermath, who is at fault for the lack of help and the mass hysteria, and whose fault it is that gas is so high- the whole nine. Not that a bar is the place to find intelligent debate, but I still have been shocked as to the conclusions people have been coming to about the whole ‘Whose fault is it?’ debate.

This one particular angle of the debate I have found myslef jumping into. That of the problems in N.O. is that a large number of their black population stayed behind, and most of these people were from the projects. And, Oh the poor, poor people. The problem is a welfare mentality. These people are not, generally speaking, self-reliable. Whose fault is this? Both the people themselves, and the government who perpetuates the lack of ambition and self-reliance in these people. If you expect the government to feed you, clothe you, and house you then I suppose that you would also expect Big Brother to come in and sweep you off your ass (even though you were told to leave) when a hurricane is on its way. Oh, but they’re poor, they don’t have cars blah blah blah. If you have two feet and a brain than you’re capable of evacuating a known flood area during a hurricane. But hey, does the ignorance run deeper than that? Were these people not educated enough to know they lived in a city that was built under the sea-level?

I’m not trying to be insensitive. I was in tears watching what these people were going through, because bottom line we are all human. We need to get real. We need to start taking better care of each other (on many levels), but could it possibly mean that we also need to see that our citizens are not being coddled and encouraged into a state of total dependancy?

Here’s a link (thanks dad) to a very well-written article about this subject specifically. The reality is not that George Bush didn’t fly in on his golden chariot to save these people, the realtiy is years and years of government mis-management on both a local and national level.