NEW ORLEANS - In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming "tribes" and dividing up the labor. As some went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect property. In a bar, a bartender put near perfect stitches into the torn ear of a robbery victim.
While mold and contagion grew in the muck that engulfed most of the city, something else sprouted in this most decadent of American neighborhoods — humanity.
This was survival after a natural disaster. Despite what the blame-placing leftists say, it could not have been prevented.
Now take a moment and think how things would be if they hit NY with a nuke or a dirty bomb. You think there a lot of people displaced now? Wait until that happens. There will be people behaving the same way in NY as there was in NO, for better and for worse. There will be those that rise up and meet the challenge and there will be those that will act just like the thugs and creeps that terrorized New Orleans, the past few days.
But the biggest distinction I would make about this disaster and a nuke in NY is, the nuke in NY can be prevented. As the old adage goes (with a slight alteration), an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.
6 comments:
I agree with you 100%, LA. The adage "Pay me now, or pay me more later" was never more true. We could not have prevented the hurricane, but we might have mitigated the result.
NYC and NOLA provide interesting contrasts, but so too does NOLA and Biloxi.
Gindy, check out this long, but worthwhile article entitled "Tribes."
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000129.html
Semper fi
I think the biggest difference between NOLA and NY that you would see is the diversity in NY wouldnt allow even neighbore hoods to become "tribes". People from different countries would try to find eachother and band together, but in NO, you have 2-3 distinct groups of people whose families have been living there for generations. That tends to bond folks together much quicker than "we time share a flat".
TMH,
Thank you for visiting. Feel free to visit and comment anytime.
I agree with you and it also has a certain apocalyptic component to it, to me, as well. It's what people would really have to do in some very real and potential man-made disasters (both intentional and accidental), just to survive. That is, to survive the idiots that roam around looking to steal and hoard and to survive the very elements of the disaster, itself.
Mustang,
You are right. Biloxi sustainied far greater damage from the elements of the storm, yet Biloxi's response is more like you would expect from a community that has just suffered great loss.
And BTW, this Tribes piece is a work of essayist art. Thanks for posting it.
Can you hear me? I have left a comment on this blog for a couple of times.
I would like to show you an interesting link. I found it on EU Rota.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/228
I hope you can hear me this time.
Shah,
I am so sorry. I must have missed your message.
I have been working many hours and we have all been busy/preoccupied with Katrina and New Orleans. The media is saturating us with it, as well. So as a result, it is impossible to keep up with all of it.
But I did follow your recommendation and read that article and it is good. With a global economy, all things like this effect everyone, in the industrialized world. Katrina was a blow, to the US in terms of both economical and human suffering. But it ripples out and will be felt with all of the trading partners of the US.
Thanks for the tip, friend. I am bookmarking the entire site to examine more closely, later.
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