The we-have-to-find-somebody-to-blame whiners ARE getting annoying, aren't they? Free Republic seems to have become Ground Zero for a bunch of Monday-morning quarterbacks who know DICK about New Orleans to complain that people are blaming a person (Bush) for a hurricane, then turn right around and do it themselves where Democrats are involved. All interspersed with snide comments about how they don't want their tax dollars going to people who obviously should have known better than to ever live there in the first place. Even more than that, people have a psychological need to rationalize something, to place blame, to put a disaster in order to somehow lessen its impact. When a bad quake hits California, the argument will be, "why do they live there?" "Why weren't they prepared?"
When a tornado ravages a town, it's a little more difficult but people might say, "why didn't they seek shelter? Why did they try to run from it in their cars?"
It's a frustrating thing because we just don't know how to categorize it. It's easier to finger point and second guess. I'm doing it a little bit because I see little, to nothing, being done to stop the "bleeding" and a beautiful city is just.. well.. disappearing. I'm saying if we're gonna blame the mayor, or the governor, or Bob Smith who didn't do his part to donate money to the "levee fund" (that's a joke) then let's blame everybody. New Orleans doesn't exist in a vacuum. Nobody's city does. All wasted breath I'm sure.
That's all it is. People need leaders in situations like this, and what the entire world has discovered over the last few days is something most in this state have always known: There
aren't any to be found in the Louisiana political class, at any level. (Well, Bobby Jindal, but look what they did to him.) America was expecting to find a Rudy Giuliani at the helm here; were THEY ever disappointed! :)
Are Nagin and Blanco pathetic? Of course they are. Blanco's worse than pathetic; she doesn't have enough functioning brain cells to successfully run an electric can opener.
What they don't deserve, what nobody deserves, is to be blamed for the loss of human life in a city that was doomed long, long, long before they ever came on the scene. That's what many here have chosen to do, and that's disgusting. New Orleans is drowning tonight for the very simple reason that New Orleans IS what it IS. Where hurricanes are concerned, its problem is and always has been fundamentally different from that of any other major American city. Blaming Blanco and Nagin for not doing something to "fix" the threat of a doomsday hurricane is pretty much like John F. Kerry blaming Bush for not leaping to his feet and charging off to New York to personally pull people out of the WTC rubble. It's just a shame that so many people can't recognize their own absurdity.
-Dan