Posted on 12/31/2004 12:56:16 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
INEVITABLY, confronted with a tragedy of unimaginable scale, the human mind looks for someone to blame. In the Dark Ages, disasters were ascribed to the wrath of God. Now, in an odd inversion that we like to think of as progress, they are adduced as evidence of no God.
In the absence of a deity to decry or appease when the earth moves in such devastating fashion, humankind reaches for the next best thing - worldly authority. Authority should have known it was coming. Authority didn't do enough to prevent it. Authority was too preoccupied with its own nefarious priorities to care.
There is plenty of authority to blame for the devastation caused by the Sumatran earthquake this week. Governments in Bangkok, Jakarta and Colombo will shoulder some of it. Governments farther afield will be inculpated for the poverty of their response. Media organisations will be attacked for being too callous and too mawkish. Unsurprisingly, perhaps the most inviting target is the US.
In the past three days I have been impressed by the originality of the latest critiques of the evil Americans. The earthquake and tsunami apparently had something to do with global warming, environmentalists say, caused of course by greedy American motorists. Then there was the rumour that the US military base at Diego Garcia was forewarned of the impending disaster and presumably because of some CIA-approved plot to undermine Islamic movements in Indonesia and Thailand did nothing about it.
To be fair, even the most animated America-hater, though, baulks at the idea of blaming George W. Bush for the destruction and death in southern Asia. But the US is blamed for not responding generously enough to help the victims of the catastrophe. A UN official this week derided Washington's contribution as stingy.
It is a label that fits the general image abroad of greedy, self-absorbed Americans. They neither know nor care much about the woes of the rest of the world, do they? Did the tsunami even get a look-in on US TV news between the holiday schmalz and the football games, I have been sneeringly asked once or twice this week by contemptuous British friends.
The answer is yes, it did. News coverage of the event has been extensive, and for the most part intelligent and mercifully free of the sort of parochialism about holidaymakers that characterises so much of the European press accounts. There have been some lapses -- the New York newspaper that carried on its front page the Manhattan supermodel's harrowing tale of survival as her boyfriend was swept away by a tidal wave. There has perhaps been a little too much "what if it happened here?" alarmist self-absorption.
But for the most part Americans have watched a sobering, heartbreaking tale of unimagined calamity unfold halfway across the world. You get a sense of the heterogeneity of this country when something such as this happens. Every newspaper in every big city has been carrying stories about local Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Thai and Malaysian communities traumatised by the long-distance search for relatives and friends.
Further, in financial terms, it is not at all clear that the US is shirking its responsibilities, pledging an initial $US35 million ($45.1million) in aid, with the prospect of much more to come, and offering military assistance. You can be sure that the private US response will be even more impressive. Don't misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that Americans are any more generous than anyone else -- simply that they, too, are moved to mercy by the plight of others.
But even as we seek to apportion blame when catastrophe strikes, we are gripped too by a kind of fatalism. We stand in awe of nature and feel helpless before its apparently insuperable power. The rising death toll in Southeast Asia seems to mock our pretensions to progress. We may have been to the moon, eradicated smallpox and created eBay, we think, but when the tectonic plates move we are no more secure than were the barefoot citizens of Pompeii.
Yet the truth is not so grim. For centuries, steady progress has been made in the struggle to limit the effects of natural disasters. Last year, an earthquake that measured 6.6 on the Richter scale killed more than 40,000 people in the Iranian city of Bam. In 1989, a more powerful earthquake struck outside San Francisco. The death toll was fewer than 100. Of course there were demographic and geologic differences that contributed to the disparity. Of course there will never be a fail-safe protection against the most destructive efforts of nature. But it is within our reach to build systems that can mitigate their effects.
Years of scientific effort and technological investment have given the world seismic sensors; early warning systems; buildings that can bounce up and down on stilts buried deep in the earth; flood barriers and other techniques. We can discern the outlines of a strategy for preventing, or at least limiting future disasters.
As we contemplate nature's fearful capacity for destruction and our apparent helplessness, we should not forget the greater tragedy that is humankind's potential for self-destruction. It was humanity, not nature, that killed tens of millions in the wars and genocides of the 20th century. Even as we master techniques to protect us from the earth's violence, we perfect new, more effective means of delivering our own.
<< Envy unrelentingly eats away at the rest of the world. >>
Oh, Dear Lord -- but ain't it so!
And is the only one of the seven deadlies that has no "reward" whatsover -- and leads inexorably and inevitably into the hatred and rage that so characterizes the increasingly-hesperophobic attitudes of the rest of the world's peoples to US.
Cutting and pasting your response and shipping out to her as we speak!! ROTFLOL
>> She is a total idiot. <<
No sir, you are off base with that remark.
She is a Kool-aid drinking idiot, thank you.
The MSM and the libs coud not blame Pres. Bush directly for the catastrophe , so they had to criticize him for remaining in Texas instead of rushing to Sumatra for a tearful showboating. But, I hear M Moore and O Stone are already looking into a neo-con conspiracy and cover-up.
Phooey on the ungrateful kangaroo-chasers down under! They would be speaking Japanese if not for the United States of America.
Ask to see the cancelled check for what she has sent. My experience is that the more they demand to government spend on charity, the less willing they are to spend any of their own cash.
The circumference of Earth is 24,902 mi, or 40,076 km. The surface is composed of about 2/3 water and one third hardened magma covered layered with rotted plant and animal byproducts mixed with powdered and decomposed minerals (soil). These pieces of hardened magma and other stuff float on an extremely dense, extremely hot core of molten metal. While floating on this spinning, molten ocean, these hunks of hardened magma and other stuff, called plates, move like like your rubber ducky or toy sailboat did in the tub when you were a kid.
When two plates bump together, they rub and grind against one another. When they get stuck on their course, they are the proverbial indestructible force fighting the immovable object. They keep on trying to move. Energy builds up, and up, and up...until it reaches the breaking point, and gives, unsticking the plates to move on their merry way. The release of this massive amount of energy manifests in the form of an earthquake.
In the case of the one that caused the tsunami, the Oceanic Aussi plate is diving UNDER the European one at a rate of about 6cm a year (IIRC). That's warp speed in geologic terms. Naturally, ever since we started keeping records, this fault has always been very active. Earthquakes happen on it several times a year.
It's a fascinating, powerful, large, unimaginably old planet we live on, not a soap bubble. There is no amount of explosive we humans could produce to cause this quake: the force would have building up for MANY years in order to reach this magnitude.
Ice ages and warming periods, divided up into geologic ages last for tens of millions of years and are cyclic in nature. We puny humans were not responsible for the geologic cycles of the planet we live on. If anything, it's the other way around. Those cyclical geologic ages brought us...US.
Wile very long, this is still a oversimplified summary, missing a LOT of information. Tell her to try educating herself, instead of lazily sucking up the pap fed to her by a bunch of greedy idiots who need her donations in order to avoid getting REAL jobs
Elsewhere at this forum, there was recently a report from some college or convention of Islamic scholars, who concluded that they and especially the teachers of Islam, are their own biggest problem, that they have let down their own people, that they have denigrated scientific achievement and technological advancement, leaving their people unprepared for their own individual advancement and responsibilities.
On the evening when the first reports came in to FR, of the earthquake, probably more than 80% of the people monitoring Free Republic, quickly became concerned in regard to the possiblity of a tsunami.
Why is that?
Because they have read up on the effects, what can happen, as a result of such an undersea earthquake.
So, at least a "tsunami watch" may have been called.
There is not a news center in the area of the disaster, that could not have done the same thing; even more so, given their proximity to water and accustomed concerns for notices to mariners and such; it being a way of life, to hear the ocean and look toward it, to see what it is telling you.
Every day, as I drive down the street, it occurs to me, that the yellow stripe in the middle of the street, is no barrier. It occurs to me, that a man or woman wearing a police officer's uniform, might not actually be a cop; that his or her badge, if indeed a cop, is no barrier to their abuse of their right to keep and bear Arms. It occurs to me that little old ladies actually do carry .38 snub-nose S&W pistols.
I have not one, but two fire alarms; not one but four five fire extinguishers; several flashlights, lots of batteries, and spare lines.
Every time I fly, I am in awe of God's blessing and thankful for a safe flight.
I am aware, that what is happening, what might be happening, and what some may plan to have happen, are all only a part of what will happen.
Yet socialists never fail to prove that, for them, all things happen as a consequence of the inequilibrium of money --- they dream of getting control over all of it, and until they do, they mean for everybody to be equally unhappy.
A socialist is a person who is obsessively-compulsively envious, jealous, and greedy, regardless of what they express, though much of what they express, is meant to twist some walls around what they want, to cause it to come to them, for their consumption, for their pleasure, or to destroy it.
I remain convinced that many things happen without regard to money, who has it, who does not, who is in power, who is not, who ... who ... who ...
Sometimes, what happens, does, because of other reasons or causes or unseen hands or by God.
Oh Brother....are they that desperate? They are really grasping at straws. Dems are so pathetic....
This would have been prevented has Komrad Kerry been elected instead of that filthy capitalist Bush. See the communistsforkerry.com website: Glorious Leader Kerry's plans for the Hurricane Shield around the US southeast were obviously intended for extension to southeast Asia.
This shield would have stopped the Bush plot to send 4 hurricanes that prevented Democrats from voting against him in Florida.
Now evil Bush's earthquake and tsumami will allow more American influence in foreign nations - running dog capitalist money attempts to buy honor from the faithful!!
/CommunistforKerry mode off
Lesson to be learned: it costs a lot more money to repair the damage inflicted by a murdering dictator and supporters, and the contributing factor of another man made disaster, centuries of Islam...
Good answer. That is the problem with these environ-whacko types. An inflated view of human beings and their effects on the earth, and an unrealistically small conception of the size and strength of the earth.
lol right?
All that nuke testing back in the day never started a shiver, but some normal bombs do... riiiiiggghhhttt!!!
Thanks for this!
My sentiments, exactly. These people waste and they are corrupt.
The left is in a state of denial not seen since the days of Stalin. If they could find a way to explain away the deaths of hundreds of millions of people at the hands of Communist dictators, why should we expect them to be any more connected to reality now?
The people at DU spend their time explaining why Kerry is going to be inargurated on Jan 20, or if they are slightly less deranged, how Bush is going to be hounded out of office later in 2005 because he stole the election. A few months ago, they were blathering about how even though Dan Rather had been caught redhanded presenting forgeries, he really had more secret stuff that would vindicate the whole Bush TANG thing, and he would be triumphantly plonking them in front of everyone any day.
E J Dionne in the NYT this week explained how, even though the Democrats got trounced in the election, the people actually agree with everything the Democrats believe, and all the leftists need to do is to explain it all better.
I won a bunch of money from deluded leftists who were utterly convinced that George Bush would immediately reinstate conscription as soon as he was reelected.
I can come up with any number of similar examples. I have not seen such head-in-the-sand positions since the days of Jimmy Carter. At this point in time, it's literally impossible to have any reasonable discourse with such people. "You can't argue with a sick mind", as they say. Until these people get shocked back into living in the real world, there is no hope for your quest.
Actually, your summary, tied together with the results of some of the research on the actual subject will end my quest nicely, thanks.
This no doubt explains the endless series of earthquakes and tsunamis that followed all that bombing in WWII including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Remember?
Neither do I
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