I got a lot of people all worked up with this post yesterday. They got their righteous indignation worked out and are probably very proud of the various names they called me, with "scum" being the most popular. I even got listed in Chrenkoff's list of inconsiderate liberals, which is pretty cool considering I just started blogging two days ago! Unprecedented success!
Now I have a confession to make. I STILL won't contribute to Katrina, despite the fact that all y'all hate me. However, my last post was purposely provocative — George Bush isn't really the reason I won't contribute (although I despise him just as much today as yesterday and have plenty of things I DO blame him for).
I won't contribute because it's been shown over and over again that in a crisis, people heap on the love, giving millions of dollars or whatever aid is needed, but then forget as life rushes back in. The Red Cross will get a ton of money this week, but what will they get 4, 5, 6 months down the road, while people still need help? Very little. Because people will have moved on.
Both 9/11 and the tsunami relief efforts show this to be true — people were giving blood after 9/11 like crazy, until the Red Cross asked them to stop because it was too much. How many people gave on March 11, 2002? (Granted, money is good any time, as it won't go bad like blood.) The rush of help after the tsunami subsided while millons were still suffering away from news headlines.
I do my giving in a planned way, not giving in times of crisis because I know the crisis money will show up. The suffering of New Orleans isn't going to be transformed in a day even if the Red Cross gave a $100 bill to everyone that asked for one. My dollar today, while symbolic, will do only so much. So I will hold on to it for a while, and give when the inevitable shortage occurs. I might even give $1.50. (That was just to be provocative, too; don't get yourself in a snit.)
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Marty Thau
Are you just trying to stir waves and call attention to yourself? There are thousands of people in New Orleans starving and living in pure misery at this very moment. Where's your compassion? You sound like a bright guy but you also sound like an insensitive idiot.
2 - Lisa
"Is it all George W. Bush's fault? Of course not. I kicked up a fuss because now's the time to point these things out, when people are paying attention to the world instead of sleepily buying into the B.S. about compassionate conservativism and spreading democracy."
That reminds me of when my seven year old faked a headache during his brother's birthday just to get attention. I'll tell you the same thing I told him: sometimes the world does not revolve around you, your opinion or your agenda. Sometimes there are circumstances that dictate everyone's attention be focused elsewhere. People of good character step aside and let people do what they need to do instead of stirring the pot "just because they can."
Of course, I put that monologue into terms a seven year old could understand when I said it to him last week. Do you need me to do that for you as well?
3 - Blunderford
Well, I'm only 6 so it's a bit over my head.
4 - Kurt Kaletka
Provocative? Really, dude, I don't see the point. Bush and conservative fiscal policies are ruining this country, and that's important to point out, but you just come across as a crank.
Just because Bush and the conservatives are wrecking things doesn't mean that liberals shouldn't try to fix them. Sure, we need to fight conservatives' destruction in this country, but if we become as cold and as calloused as they are, are we really helping? Think it over.
5 - D L Ennis
"I Still Won't Contribute to Katrina"
Well, good for you who ever you are...I'm sure the whole world is watching what you are or are not going to do...
D L
6 - Blunderford
Not the whole world, but you.
7 - OneMonkey'sUncle
As a refugee myself - from the relentless bickering and partisan politics overthrow of original mission at Metafilter - can I ask... WTF? I've been reading Blogcritics for several weeks, and while there were some understandably heated "discussions," it never disintegrated into the kind of schoolyard pettiness that ruined Metafilter. Even regulars with whom I disagree effortlessly earn my respect by respecting others, including me. So, again... WTF is this now, and is this indicative of the "real" Blogcritics that I've somehow been shielded from for three or four weeks?
8 - Silas Kain
No, Uncle, I think this is atypical. Nerves are frazled. Patience is waning. Speaking for myself, I have to say that this event has been sobering. First off what has happened to these people in the entire area is tragic. And then, of course, I'm thinking about the fact that this could happen to me in the blink of an eye. As powerful and great as America is, Uncle, Mother Nature is far mightier. We're not as invincible as we think we are. I hope that if something like this happened to us in the Northeast that I would be man enough to take in or help even my staunchest political opponent.
9 - Ned
'I STILL won't contribute to Katrina, despite the fact that all y'all hate me.' No, no one hates you, Blunderford. Like many of the misanthropes of the left, you just seem to be a very sad and miserable person. I'm optimistic, though, that someday you'll stop your bile and cynicism and actually do something constructive with your talent. Why not start today?
10 - Silas Kain
Am I a misanthrope from the left? Oh give me a home where the homos all roam and the queers and the misanthropes play...
11 - marc
Excuse me while I get out my Cluebat courtesy the New York Times.
And need I point out the entire leeve system was and is designed to protect the city for a cat 3 storm. And any "shoring up" that has been touted by the left leaning blogs as being under funded by Bush is just that. Shoring the system up to cat 3 standards, not cat 4 or 5 as Katrina was.Need I also point out that this vulnerability has been known since at least Hurricane Camille in 1969. If you really want to stretch it a bit one could say since since Galveston in 1900.
So lets play the lefts version of the "blame game." Lets PLAY, we can also play the blame-Nixon, blame-Ford, blame-Carter, blame-Reagan, blame-Bush 41, and blame-Clinton game, especially after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. However, since Congress allocates the money and the President has no line-item veto or modification power, the responsibility for funding these programs falls to our representatives.
And just think, if you really want to play the "blame game" you could honestly lay 90 plus percent of the blame on the local officials. After all the entire levee system belongs to the people of Louisiana, not the federal government.
It isn't and never was an interstate system. Why didn't Louisiana fund its own improvements? What have they done about the situation except wait for the rest of the country to fund them?
That's what someone honestly looking at the situation would conclude. Obviously that's not the case here.
And that's too bad when so many are in need, but it's more important for some to snipe from the sidelines in an attempt to make cheap partisan political points.
12 - Shark
Marc, regardless -- Bush is still an evil fuck.
Have a nice day!
13 - Marc
Thanks for living up to your rep Shark.
14 - Shark
And thanks for constantly defending the President who is overseeing the dying of this once-great American nation.
Coming soon:
Deficits!
Depression!
Disease!
Disasters!
Brought to you by...
...you know the routine.
BTW: I'll kiss yer ass if our nation recovers from this; the 'trickle down' from Katrina is gonna make 9/11 look like a picnic.
Bye, bye, Uncle Sam. We knew ya when.
15 - Bob A. Booey
Marc, that's one levee.
The problem wasn't just one levee, it was others that had been ignored altogether or weren't completed.
Read the articles I link to on the first, original "I Won't Contribute" thread.
The Bush administration's lack of funding prioritization for this project meant they couldn't build the levees higher and build more of them. Yes, we couldn't have saved every life -- but we could have saved many, probably hundreds, along with millions and millions of dollars in property if we'd prepared better, as local leaders in New Orleans and Bush's own agency administrators recommended the last few years.
That is all.
16 - Nancy
Pretty good, to get yourself turned into Public Grinch #1 as a beginning blogger. Silas, (comment 10) that's the first smile I've had all week. Thanks.
17 - TJ
I have never in my life commented on any bulletin board, etc. on the net, but this time I have something to say. It all comes down to this: Blunderford's first post blamed Katrina for his not getting his sugar fix fast enough; blamed George Bush for Katrina's distruction; and, then blamed the 60 million losers who voted for George Bush for the Iraq war.
Blunderford's second post sounded like a lot of back tracking and excuses. Maybe he went back and reread his first post.
I am not going to call Blunderford names, or blame him for his political views, but I am going to ask him not to use the word "y'all" in his post again. I would hate for the rest of the world to associate him with the rest of us from the South. There are those of us who care more about old people getting medical help, babies something to eat, or thirsty people a drink of water, than proving a point to a President and his party by denying a desperate person a dollar.
I wonder if it occurred to Blunderford that his precious $1 might have given a drink of water to someone who hated the President, disagreed with the war, and blamed Bush on both. Sound like someone we know? Of well, I'm sure somewhere in the previously mentioned 60 million losers someone will willingly give that $1.
And, to Silas (comment no. 8), rest assured that if something like Katrina ever happens to you and yours in the Northeast, we in the South will be there for you. We won't even ask about your political views.
18 - stacey
The People to blame are the idiots who built a city on a sinking bog!!!!
19 - slmi
scourge yourself to purity to blackhearted cur from the depths of Satans ass!!!
There fell better now?
Yesh master.
Freak?
20 - Ricardo Dalessandro
MICHAEL MOORE should donate part of his food budget to feed a few needed families.
21 - octogent
Ihave only been aware of this web page for a short time. Enjoy and ruminate on the mental pictures many responses engender. Has anyone other than me noticed how uneducated, childish, sophomoric and juvenile the comments made by the leftists and so-called liberal tend to be? Is t lack of manners, lack of mental capacity, or just plain stupidity?
22 - Z.Z. Bachman
octogent....
All of the above...
Actually it is really sad that at a time of human tragedy every mishap is turned into a political statement by both parties and our illustrious mass media. This country is in trouble, not because of Democrats or Republicans but because we are forgetting how to be Americans. One nation under God. You can argue the God part... but we certainly have forgotten how to be ONE nation. All for one and one for no one seems to be the new mantra.... sad.
23 - Marc
Bob A Booey
And so...?They all, each and every levee, were designed to withstand a cat 3 storm not a storm of Katrina's intensity. You will also note, if the hate Bush fog is lifted, every plan designed to upgrade beyond the cat 3 level were estimated to take decades to complete.
And of course you over look the fact they are a State project and it was local officials where most of the blame should be directed.
BTW "octogent" those that you refer to, and they are a small percentage, are called Leftards. A sure sign of being counted among the Leftards crowd is to use the phrase "selected not elected" to name one example.
24 - Bob A. Booey
Marc, read the articles that are linked on the other topic. Higher levees (which could have been done by now) would have saved more lives and kept more water out, according to the people on the ground there.
The Congressional funding allowance was to be used for those local/state efforts.
That is all.
25 - Bennett
Awwww..... Has it died down yet?
Lightning? No?
Okay then.
Great job and welcome to Blogcritics!
Your prose is clear and direct, your positions are well thought out. I appreciate this follow up to yesterday's post (I never get more than ten comments, butthen, I'm boring.) and think it was done with humility and reflection.
Fuck all that attack without contributing!
Keep it up Bub, I like your style.
Bennett