Comments on: Update on the Precautionary Principle

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 00:38:58 +0000

I don’t feel ashamed, I feel frightened and angry. Some large proportion of Americans have shown themselves to have much more common sense decency than the government does.

The debacle in New Orleans definitely shows a systemic problem, but I don’t see it running through the whole culture.

By: hestal

hestal — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 10:57:00 +0000

How will history write about this tragedy? Will it write that a combination of social, political and economic currents resulted in an inadequate response to an obvious weakness? Or will it write that an inadequate man, placed in power by the judicial fiat of five individuals, produced an inadequate response to an obvious weakness? I vote for the latter, because historians write about persons whenever they can. And in this case, they would be right.

Common sense is not very helpful in situations like this. Intellection is.

By: jadagul

jadagul — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 21:27:02 +0000

Bbenzon: New Orleans’s similarity to a third-world country goes much deeper than poverty and wealth issues. We really are structured like a lousy third-world country–incompetent administration, corrupt bureaucrats and cops. On some level, I’m actually surprised by how competent the local response has been: I would have expected New Orleans politicians to rise to much greater and more impressive levels of incompetence.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 17:28:18 +0000

I think that’s right. It feels like a failure, a failure that we all share.

When the World Trade Center fell, it felt like we’d all been attacked, all been targets. I’ve written about that before: it made a visceral, palpable connection in my head with my visions of my father’s death.

This feels equally collective and shared, but it’s a sense of shame this time, not anger and pain that we could be hurt so by someone who bears us ill will. And it makes the shame all the greater and dirtier and more humiliating when political leaders, the people who are supposed to speak for and with us, try to run like cowards from that shame, and talk shit like “our response has been magnificent” and “we only just found out there’s a problem” and “it’s the fault of the victims”. Or when some spoiled brat like Goldberg mocks and makes light of it all.

By: bbenzon

bbenzon — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 17:10:30 +0000

The way I see it, the nation — considered as an abstract geopolitical entity responsible for the welfare of its citizens — has failed. Just how that failure is to be apportioned among individuals and organizations of all kinds, that is a difficult matter to figure out. But the fact of national failure is obvious.

This should not have happened. It was preventable given our expertise, knowledge, and resources. This failure is evidence that we are not ready for life in the 21st century.

As for the soul searching and reoganization in the wake of 9/11, had the nation been healthy, that would process would have made us less vulnerable to a natural force like that embodied in Katrina. Instead, it looks like that exercise had all the effectiveness of the Keystone Cops.

As for the comments I’ve been reading and seeing on network TV about New Orleans looking like a third-world disaster area — that’s the ugly truth about structural poverty in this country. The geo-social fabric of the country is riddled with third world enclaves while CEOs make 100s of times what their employees do.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 14:05:00 +0000

Oh, yeah, Chertoff! Holy SHIT, what an asshole. “Our MAGNIFICENT response”. We only just this minute heard about the convention center. There’s some leadership for you.

The Post article is interesting on the pumps: sounds like one faction of experts on the scene fully expect them to work, and another faction is skeptical.

By: amardeepmsingh

amardeepmsingh — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 13:49:12 +0000

I was shocked by Michael Brown, and by Chertoff on NPR yesterday ("What convention center? New Orleans has a convention center? Let me assure you, we are doing everything we humanly can...") I was listening to that live, and nearly stopped the car in disbelief. Doesn't this guy have some obligation to at least be current? Thanks for the pointer on the private contractor that plugged the breach. I hadn't heard about it. Here's to hoping the levee pumps work!