Gnashing of Teeth
I have other stuff I wanted to mutter about, but it’s hard to think about anything else right now.
I watched a lot of cable news last night. Shattering stuff. ‘We need help, sir, we really do.’ ‘Look at these old people over here – look at this little baby.’ People in floods of tears, people mopping each other’s faces, people angry on behalf of those older, younger, weaker, frailer than themselves. People desperately needing water. (We all know what it’s like to be thirsty – imagine being that thirsty for four days! While watching people around you dying of dehydration – knowing if you don’t get water you’ll all die soon.) People who’ve lost everything they had, who went to the convention center as they were told, to be evacuated.
You should see the New York Times today. Huge headline the width of the page: Despair and Lawlessness Grip New Orleans as Thousands Remain Stranded in Squalor. Under that a huge photo nearly the width of the page, of a body floating in the floodwater. Not the usual NY Times, not the usual Nawlins, not the usual anything.
State officials have described the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a national disgrace.
Much of the frustration has been directed at the national authority, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). The head of the New Orleans emergency operations, Terry Ebbert, has questioned when reinforcements will actually reach the increasingly lawless city. “This is a national disgrace. Fema has been here three days, yet there is no command and control,” Mr Ebbert said. “We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can’t bail out the city of New Orleans.” One man, George Turner, who was still waiting to be evacuated, summed up much of the anger felt by the refugees. “Why is it that the most powerful country on the face of the Earth takes so long to help so many sick and so many elderly people?” he asked.
New Orleans’ mayor expressed some rage in a radio interview – there is an audio link to the interview on this page. He and the interviewer both lose it at the end.
The Times points out what should be obvious – that the unbelievable mess in New Orleans shows up the usually papered-over or shoved-aside inequality in the US.
The scenes of floating corpses, scavengers fighting for food and desperate throngs seeking any way out of New Orleans have been tragic enough. But for many African-American leaders, there is a growing outrage that many of those still stuck at the center of this tragedy were people who for generations had been pushed to the margins of society. The victims, they note, were largely black and poor, those who toiled in the background of the tourist havens, living in tumbledown neighborhoods that were long known to be vulnerable to disaster if the levees failed. Without so much as a car or bus fare to escape ahead of time, they found themselves left behind by a failure to plan for their rescue should the dreaded day ever arrive…In the days since neighborhoods and towns along the Gulf Coast were wiped out by the winds and water, there has been a growing sense that race and class are the unspoken markers of who got out and who got stuck.
NPR cited and talked to the author of what sounds like a highly relevant book, this morning – Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature. He talked about the role of race and class in the city’s geography. Richer people live on the higher ground, the poor live on the low ground. If you have money, you’re safer, if you don’t, you’re not. If you have money, you can leave town, if you don’t, you can’t. And that’s that.
Hmm…we have an appalling lack of social services in the US, but rescue? I thought we were pretty good at that. Perhaps precisely because it is something that even Republicans and free-marketeers think is necessary – because natural disasters hit everyone, even rich people.
“It is very noticeable that when there is an interational disaster, that the services are more often provided by European countries (Britain, France, Netherlands,etc,) than the USA”
Is that true? It’s news to me if so.
“”It is very noticeable that when there is an interational disaster, that the services are more often provided by European countries (Britain, France, Netherlands,etc,) than the USA””
Indeed, just as with the Tsunami – the US was nowhere to be… oh, wait..
So what is your point? Usually you don’t mince words. Of 480,000 people who lived in New Orleans – 80% left as ordered.
In the days since the city flooded, how many deaths have occurred as the result of civil disorder? How many rapes have occurred? How many bodies have been left to float away? Will final numbers support the hyperbole? TV is great. Show aerial footage 20 times of 10,000 people waiting at the SuperDome and audiences think they’ve seen 200,000 victims. Meanwhile, there have been 5,000 rooftop airlift rescues by the Coast Guard. The hospitals and nursing homes have been evacuated more-or-less successfully. Estimates to rebuild run into the billions and millions of people in Louisana, Mississippi and Alabama have been touched by loss. Are you saying that the nation-wide,culture-deep condemnations of the US that you cite are justified? Are you saying that until more certain metrics than CNN cameras operated by people who haven’t slept in 5 days can be applied there is no definitive way of characterizing recent events in New Orleans, or are you just ventilating?
NPR does like to play the race card – slyly. Race isn’t part of this tragedy. 70% of New Orleans is black – a higher percentage in the areas flooded. So the heros are black, the victims are black, everyone’s black. As for the the rich living on high ground, in any culture that has ever existed part of the definition of being rich is to live on high ground. And does the Times know that the rapists and looters were downtrodden folks “toiling in the background….Without so much as a car or bus fare…” rather than a tough criminal element who remained behind purposefully to take advantage of the confusion?
In civil emergencies the lowest level of authority, in this country at least, has the first responsibility to respond, then up the chain. What you did see in New Orleans was a pitifully unprepared and disorganized first response. And this you saw through the eyes of a myopic, highly politicized, anti-American press bristling with negativity. So was the rage expressed by the mayor of New Orleans really in frustration with the failure of federal authorities or in desperation with the failure of his own demoralized and poorly led police force? And state officials blaming FEMA, it rolls off the tongue nicely, doesn’t it? “How can a nation..blah-dee, blah, blah…umpty-ump tsunami victims, yet can’t even ..blah, blah, blah.” Where was the state’s emergency response? How the hell do state officials in Louisana expect Guardsmen from New Hampshire or Wyoming to respond to a situation Louisanans live with (and train for) every day, and after that situation has gotten out of control?
I know it’s upsetting to see anyone suffering. Nonetheless, humanitarian problems in New Orleans are relatively slight and they proceeded directly out of a failure of local government. Blaming the Feds is a red herring.
BB
My question is: 4 years after 9/11 and the declaration of GWOT and all the duct-tape and plastic sheeting “preparation for attack”, why should the current performance of the Bush team be expected to inspire me with the confidence that they could actually handle another attack by terrorists?
And if I don’t feel that confidence, what has been the point of the last 4 years? Iraq? Don’t make me laugh. Bin Laden? Been forgotten.
Thanks for the voice of sanity, Bill. From what I’ve been reading in various e-mails–not the mainstream media–there are enormous logistical problems to be overcome. All of the major highways are out, and the secondary roads can’t handle heavy trucks. Many of the large vehicles already in the city are underwater and can’t be put to use.
And it doesn’t help that armed, angry people are firing at rescuers; it scares off would-be do-gooders. Hence the attempt to crack down on lawlessness–seems heartless, but must be done.
Along those lines, it’s really struck me that I don’t remember seeing such rage among the tsunami victims; surely they suffered and lost just as much. I wonder why that is? A function of selective reporting? Or is it, as a friend of mine theorizes, due to Americans’ expectations that the government will bail them out (I’m sure the bigger the welfare state, the more pronounced such expectations would be)?
Or maybe it’s a combustible mix of entitlement and grievance sensibilities, brought to a boil by overheated rhetoric.
“WTF?Shouldn’t the government bail out its citizens in the case of a vast natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina?”
Dude, calm down. I’m certainly not even close to an extreme libertarian–I’m just wondering at what seems to me to be such a huge difference between the NO victims’ responses and the responses of victims of other disasters. You’ve got to admit, there does seem to be a difference. And I think it’s possible that expectations may have something to do with it.
And you know, just because I use the words “welfare state” doesn’t mean I’m accusing anyone of screaming red communism. For chrissakes, I worked for four years in public housing; we have a quasi-welfare state in the US. Just a fact, not an accusation.
Sheesh.
“I’m just wondering at what seems to me to be such a huge difference between the NO victims’ responses and the responses of victims of other disasters. You’ve got to admit, there does seem to be a difference. And I think it’s possible that expectations may have something to do with it.”
Nah. I prefer to blame it on the innate evil festering in the hearts of all Americans.
Rose, come on…
“Or maybe it’s a combustible mix of entitlement and grievance sensibilities, brought to a boil by overheated rhetoric.”
Maybe it’s thirst!!
Have you ever gone without water for four days? Have you thought about what it would be like? Do you know how long people can survive without water? Hint: under four days. Then there are the people dying, the lack of food, the fear –
Are you seriously saying that people in that situation need entitlement and grievance culture and rhetoric to feel angry? They may be factually wrong to be angry, it may have been simply physically impossible to get water to them any faster (though there seem to be a huge number of newspapers and other media out there who also couldn’t figure out what took so long), but surely anger is understandable under the circumstances!
Maybe it’s not anger at the government’s failure to “bail them out” as an entitlement that they didn’t get – it could be anger and frustration because they had (as I had) MUCH HIGHER expectations of the various institutions in this country responsible for dealing with major urban natural disasters.
Of all of those who chose not to obey the order to leave the City of New Orleans but stayed instead – right in the path of a force 4 hurricane, how many were fortunate enough to become merely thirsty (instead of dead), and of those how many became angry because they thought their thirst was someone else’s fault? It’s only right to quantify the extent of this small category of complaint before launching wholesale criticisms of our country, our culture and our government. We are not talking about those who were taken unawares and killed by the storm or the surge of water, nor those displaced from demolished homes who had taken to the roads inland, nor those in New Orleans who remained of their own volition to be useful. What are we talking about? Those left in the heart of the city and around the SuperDome. How many were there? Was it 30,000? There are an estimated three million who have been directly affected by Katrina so far.
I appreciate that the inability to help the helpless is “unacceptable.” I agree thirst is a frightening and debilitating condition. However, mistakes are made. Recently in a public crisis an innocent man was shot by the police 7 times in the head. Turns out a lapse in communication had caused a true tragedy. Did policy change. No. Will that mistake be made again? probably not. Had federal officials known that the Governor of Louisana did not deploy her Guard or State Patrol expeditiously or with firm instructions, had they known that the Mayor of New Orleans could not maintain control over his law enforcement and did not communicate with the Governor, would they have waited till Wednesday? (Wednesday is the day Air Force 1 did its fly-over.) Wednesday the humanitarian crisis was understood at the highest level. Wednesday President Bush delivered a deadline: everything necessary to solve the problem had to be physically entering New Orleans as AF1 touched down in Mobile, Friday morning 8:30 AM.
Meanwhile, all available manpower in New Orleans turned to locating and evacuating the bed ridden and truly compromised, and as rose nunez points out “…there are enormous logistical problems….”, and besides, what else should they have done?
“Maybe it’s thirst!!”
OB, does thirst make people shoot at other people who are trying to distribute water?
Look, I understand why the stranded people are so terrified and angry and irrational. I just don’t understand why some of them are scaring off the people who are coming to help. There’s more here, I think, than just human frailty. Why didn’t this happen in other areas that were hit as badly?
What makes me think it’s possibly–possibly, not definitely–“entitlement and grievance” sensibilities is that I saw very similar behaviors in much less dire circumstances when I worked at the Housing Authority. People who work in social services know this phenomenon all too well.
Jeez, I know it from my own family. If you expect to be provided for, you stop providing for yourself. Then you start trying to control the provider through any means necessary. It’s worth considering, at least.
Most of the people who were stranded didn’t engage in criminal activity, or shoot at would-be rescuers. I guess I have to make it clear I’m not talking about them, and I’m not “blaming” them for not getting out of the city. I understand how hard it is–if the National Guard found it hard to get into the damn place, how much harder would it be for someone with no money, no transportation, and sick/elderly/infant family members to get out?
It just struck me that there seemed to be more trouble with anger and violence in this particular spot than in other places and in other disasters, and I wondered why.
(FWIW, Matt restated my friend’s thesis perfectly, sans my distorting, corrupting right-wing static. It’s what she meant: Her expectations were higher. Having worked in government one way or another for many years, mine, I guess, weren’t.)
This is going nowhere. The truth will come out eventually, and doubtless show that there is blame to be had at ALL levels, from recalcitrant individuals to over-complicated Federal bureaucracies. Meanwhile, there is a question of how one ‘obeys an order’ to evacuate when one does not possess personal transportation…
But in general, all this proves is that one need never listen to simple positive evaluations of national characteristics in the face of disaster. [Negative ones would be cynical sniping, at this point].
“I understand why the stranded people are so terrified and angry and irrational. I just don’t understand why some of them are scaring off the people who are coming to help.”
Criminals who want to continue looting? It’s easier to keep on with your crime spree when everything’s in chaos and there’s no authority. So, how many people, exactly, are shooting at the relief workers?
By the way, in some areas of Southeast Asia devastated by the tsunami several months ago, far away from the relief efforts and media scrutiny, gangs of criminals were looting and raping during the chaos. Guess it must have been all those liberal-media-induced sky-high expectations and all that corupting government largesse.
I know it’s upsetting to see anyone suffering. Nonetheless, humanitarian problems in New Orleans are relatively slight and they proceeded directly out of a failure of local government. Blaming the Feds is a red herring.
– Bill Bradbrooke
Nonetheless, humanitarian problems in New Orleans are relatively slight
Then I’d hate to see what major humanitarian problems look like.
Blaming the Feds is a red herring.
Yes, let’s not worry about how competently the Feds would handle the next big terrorist attack, for instance. Everything is under control (except for you know who). Anyway, blaming the Feds is only a red herring when the Republicans are in power.
Bill, I genuinely hope you are right when you say that, ‘ humanitarian problems in New Orleans are relatively slight’ and that we have all been watching misleading footage for the past few days. However I do try to get my information from as many and as varied sources as possible. I simply can’t accept that everything I have seen is a from a ‘myopic, highly politicized, anti-American press bristling with negativity.’ On the other hand, Fox News is not one of my regular sources, so perhaps …
‘chose not to obey the order to leave the City of New Orleans ‘ is a locution which is becoming very familiar. I have seen it put more crudely, but it still seems to characterise those who were caught as having been wilfull, obstinate or otherwise morally culpable, rather than caught up in a situation far beyond their capacity to cope. Simply telling people to run – in effect sauve qui peut – does not absolve the authorities of their obligation to those couldn’t or didn’t.
I do not doubt that some human predators stayed precisely in order to loot. (Although it is beyond me how an armfull of sodden jeans or an almost certainly soaked and ruined TV can be worth five days of hell.) But America is an armed society and New Orleans is noted for a high crime rate, so this must surely have been a factor in emergency planning. It can’t have been a suprise.
I am in no position to debate with you which level of government, which branch or organisation, which elected official or political appointee screwed up where, when or how. That will be for the coming weeks to decide. Of course, some partisans will be eager to blame Bush (I incline that way myself, but I’m prepared to wait for clearer evidence) just as some from the right will seek to blame degenerates who angered God. The former are precipitate, the latter loathsome. But screw up somebody did.
On the race issue; I am sure you are right about the demographics. Good luck explaining it to black America.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘the nation-wide,culture-deep condemnations of the US ‘. By nation-wide I take it you mean the USA? In a time such as this hard questions will be asked, accusation, many emotionally based, will be made, and people will seek to apportion blame. Please don’t assume that any criticism of any aspect of the American body politic is ipso facto malevolent anti-americanism.
I urge Bill Bradbrooke and rose nunez to go to The Cunning Realist and scroll down the comments to the one with bold face. This may give them some idea of the quality of the planning that led to this.
However stupid some of the people of New Orleans may be, they deserved better of their Federal Gov’t.
And I’m still wondering why I should believe that these guys can handle the devestation of a terrorist attack. Four years of Homeland Security and this is what we get. What have they been doing?
I wonder if the mayor is living in the superdrome?
If he’s not then i think he should keep it zipped!
http://opinionated.blogsome.com/
Opinionated Voice
Okay, Rose – I thought you were talking about the people who were simply angry, as opposed to the shooters.
Bill B –
“Of all of those who chose not to obey the order to leave the City of New Orleans but stayed instead – right in the path of a force 4 hurricane, how many were fortunate enough to become merely thirsty (instead of dead), and of those how many became angry because they thought their thirst was someone else’s fault?”
Chose? How many of them had no way to obey the order? It’s meaningless to talk about ‘obeying’ an order it’s physically impossible to obey. If you tell me to fly from here to Kansas City on my own wing power, I can’t obey you.
Oh, never mind. It’s too obvious to be worth arguing.
On the other hand, by the way, there’s no such thing as ‘merely thirsty’ – being thirsty with no way to get water is not mere, it means you’ll be dead soon.
The news coverage and discussion of this is giving me the impression that a lot of people actually don’t realize this. They talk about food first, mention starvation first. No – it’s water. If you have to flee for your life and you have 60 seconds to throw together a survival kit, grab water, not food. Dehydration kills you long before starvation does – it’s three days versus three weeks.
It’s a little scary that people don’t know that. Maybe a lot of people who were stranded in New Orleans didn’t know it either.
“It just struck me that there seemed to be more trouble with anger and violence in this particular spot than in other places and in other disasters, and I wondered why. “
This is no great mystery: roughly 60 percent of the population of New Orleans is black, and virtually all of those left behind were black. Blacks are the most mal-adapted social group in the United States, bar none, as measured by virtually any quantifiable measure.
Furthermore, more affluent and middle-class blacks had heeded the evacuation order and left the city. Left behind in NO were, quite literally, the very bottom of the social barrel, with a sprinkling of stragglers and tourists thrown in for good measure.
So, what happens when a major Hurricane drowns a city, with a population that consists entirely of the bottom decile of society? Well, chaos happens – that really shouldn’t be a surprise.
dobeln, try not to be so disgusting.
More affluent people of all races had left the city because they could leave the city. Poor people who don’t have cars, or who have old unreliable cars and can’t afford much gas or to stay in hotels – which is a very large percentage of the population of New Orleans, a city with a high proportion of very poor people – can’t ‘heed’ evacuation orders, unless they are given help, which they weren’t.
Obviously, there were criminals and addicts among the people who didn’t leave; that’s self-evident. But it’s disgusting and ridiculous to assume or imply that that includes all the people who were unable to leave. A lot of them were just poor, dammit. You know – poor? Not much money? Low wages? You do realize such people exist, right? People who work the many service jobs that New Orleans relies on, that don’t pay much? You do realize that those jobs don’t make it possible to buy expensive cars and expensive gas and stay in expensive hotels at a moment’s notice, don’t you? Or are you so dogmatic that you think anyone who isn’t ‘affluent and middle-class’ is either a criminal or on welfare?
And what’s this ‘chaos happens’ nonsense? Are you saying the moneyless people of New Orleans were to blame for the non-appearance of water and transportation and help at the convention center?
Quote from this week’s ‘Economist’;
“The Census Bureau said that 12.7% of Americans were living below the poverty threshold in 2004. The three states with the highest poverty rates were Mississippi, New Mexico and Louisiana”
dobeln
I suppose, globally speaking, that I come from the top ‘decile of society’, but were I left up to my neck in shit and corpses for five days I would probably work some anger. As for looting, no problem. It’s flotsam; take what you need and if some idiot thinks a wide-screen TV is what he needs in a flood, that’s his problem.
Sorry that the victims of this disaster – who are still in agony as you type your smug crap – didn’t meet your expectations. Yes, the lower classes can be so ungrateful. We’ll get to them eventually, but they’d damn well better respect property rights while they’re waiting.
As for the mad vicious stuff – and it is happening now, Mayor Nagel said very clearly that the his greatest problem was groups of drug addicts cut off from their supply, armed and out of control.
So why don’t you go look up what proportion of drug addicts are black. Actually, don’t bother. Just call it ‘roughly 60 percent ‘ and throw in a couple of ‘virtually’s’ and we’ll call it a statistically based argument. And I promise not to call you a racist twat who has not the faintest concept of what is appropriate.
“Dehydration kills you long before starvation does – it’s three days versus three weeks.
It’s a little scary that people don’t know that. Maybe a lot of people who were stranded in New Orleans didn’t know it either.”
A few hours ago I heard an interview with a survivor who’d just gotten out of New Orleans this morning. He said he and his friends “discovered” a couple days ago that they could drink the water out of water heaters.
A blogger–I forget who–had the great idea of dropping leaflets with urban post-disaster survival instructions on them, such as “drink water from water heaters.” Critics pointed out that it might have taken a couple of days to print them up. We ought to print them up now and have them ready for next time.
“Still, many of those angles are obscured by Democratic pols that you don’t want to subject to friendly fire.”
You seem to have mistaken this website for Daily Kos.
“You seem to have mistaken this website for Daily Kos.”
Recent postings have contributed to making that kind of misidentification much more likely.
No, Dobeln, you misunderstand, that wasn’t analysis, it was a literal request, or command, by way of monitoring this discussion. Do try to be less disgusting, or you’ll find your posts heavily edited. I very nearly deleted that entire post yesterday.
Dobeln,
No. It was your ‘explanation’ of the chaos in New Orleans that disgusted me. The chaos in question included the non-provision of water, food, medicine, transport, and other supplies to approximately 100,000 stranded hurricane victims – and you ‘explain’ that by the class position of those very people.
This is no great mystery: roughly 60 percent of the population of New Orleans is black, and virtually all of those left behind were black. Blacks are the most mal-adapted social group in the United States, bar none, as measured by virtually any quantifiable measure.
Furthermore, more affluent and middle-class blacks had heeded the evacuation order and left the city. Left behind in NO were, quite literally, the very bottom of the social barrel, with a sprinkling of stragglers and tourists thrown in for good measure.
So, what happens when a major Hurricane drowns a city, with a population that consists entirely of the bottom decile of society? Well, chaos happens – that really shouldn’t be a surprise.
It’s also your equation of poor people with the very bottom of the social barrel. You seem to be equating poverty with crime. Poor people are by definition at the bottom of the financial barrel, but the social one? That’s highly debatable, surely.
You’re right about taking note of the feeling of disgust though. That is always very worth doing, and I did it even before you told me to. I think it was the tone of smug malice that caused it.
“You seem to have mistaken this website for Daily Kos.”
– Karl
Recent postings have contributed to making that kind of misidentification much more likely.
– dobeln
It is certainly possible to criticize harshly the President and his administration for their handling of this disaster without necessarily being particularly invested in the future of the Democratic Party, much less wanting to shelter local Democratic politicians from blame. By all means those local and state politicians (including Democrats) whose incompetence, negligence, and corruption contributed to this fiasco ought to be punished severely. But this does not excuse the appalling ineptitude of DHS and FEMA, and the federal government has complete responsibility for those two agencies. Last time I checked, the Republicans have been running the federal government for the last four and a half years. Bush himself created the DHS, set the policies and priorities for it, appointed the current and previous head of FEMA, etc, etc, etc. The buck stops there.
“No. It was your ‘explanation’ of the chaos in New Orleans that disgusted me. The chaos in question included the non-provision of water, food, medicine, transport, and other supplies to approximately 100,000 stranded hurricane victims.”
First, a quick review of what excactly made people talk of “chaos” – or more specifically, in the quote I replied to: “trouble with anger and violence”.
From the BBC:
“He witnessed a good deal of violence, with scuffles going on and people breaking things.
“The group really feared for their safety because they were being targeted because they were the only white people there.”
“There was a lot of heat from the people in there, people shouting racial abuse about us being white.
“The army warned us to keep our bags close to us and to grip them tight.”
“He said he saw crack cocaine being used in the filthy toilets, youngsters breaking into soft drink machines and men brawling. Urine and excrement spilled into corridors where they were sleeping.”
…and some more from Reuters:
“People left homeless by Hurricane Katrina told horrific stories of rape, murder and trigger-happy guards in two New Orleans centers that were set up as shelters but became places of violence and terror.”
“”We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom,” one National Guard soldier told Reuters. “Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death.”
…and some from the Times of London:
“Officials were even forced to suspend the evacuation of almost 25,000 flood refugees from the New Orleans Superdome after shots were fired at Chinook army helicopters overseeing the loading of people onto a fleet of prison buses.”
…and from CNN.com:
“Boat rescue teams looking for Katrina survivors told CNN they had been ordered to stand down Thursday by FEMA officials concerned about security.”
…and so on… There is not any shortage of these kinds of stories out there.
Now: In order to answer the question of why the disaster and subsequent water and food shortages caused so much “trouble with anger and violence”, the social composition of those who are experiencing the “trouble with anger and violence” should be taken into account.
Furthermore, there are larger issues of causality to address here: Food and water distribution, as well as evacuation prospects are not independent of civil disorder. If people shoot at the rescuers, fewer people will be rescued.
Now, let’s skip to the real reason for this dustup:
“You’re right about taking note of the feeling of disgust though. That is always very worth doing, and I did it even before you told me to. I think it was the tone of smug malice that caused it.”
Guilty as charged, there was smugness in the post – because frankly, I felt tired of intelligent people who claim to worship at the shrine of rationality ignoring the 900-pound pink sociological gorilla standing in the middle of the room.
I’ll try to de-smugify future posts – I appriciate this forum, and, well, smugness is rarely the way to start up good conversation.
Okay. Thanks for admission!
Sure, clearly there was plenty of bad behavior. But. The fact remains that people were without water along with many other essentials for four days. Personally I’m far more interested in and worried by that fact than I am in who was or wasn’t angry.
I’m not in denial about bad bahavior in (part of) the black underclass, I promise you. It depresses the hell out of me, but I’m not in denial about it.
“Recent postings have contributed to making that kind of misidentification much more likely.”
What Brian said. Thanks, Bri.
FWIW, I’m not a Democrat.