Peggy Noonan asks "I wonder if the cruel and stupid young people who are doing the looting know the power they have to damage their country. I wonder, if they knew, if they'd stop it." I doubt they know and even if they did they wouldn't care. Selfish thugs only understand one thing - a good beatdown, which is what should be delivered to them. The longer punks are allowed to walk the flooded streets of NOLA carrying guns and sticking people up, the longer it will take to regain control of the city.
Another column about the looting written by Michael Graham has the following quotes:
One news story quoted a local named Mike Franklin, who stood nearby and watched the looters' progress. "To be honest with you, people who are oppressed all their lives, man, it's an opportunity to get back at society," he said.
"Get back at society?" You mean the society that gives you, for free, 12 years of education? Whose cops patrol your streets and whose taxpayers provide billions in welfare payments, health care and other benefits-not to mention billions in FEMA money? Is that the "oppressive society" you have in mind?
It is a tenuous thread that society clings to with NOLA a good example of what happens when people are taught from an early age that they are victims. It's times like these that I'm so thankful for my parents. I grew up just as poor as many of the looters are reputed to be. I remember hanging out at the unemployment office and having to go the county health department because we couldn't afford a doctor. But I was also taught the difference between right and wrong. Of course, that was in the age before plasma TV's.
If you're like me and you wonder why didn't the people leave when there was a "mandatory evacuation" order from the Mayor of NO - here's a little clue why. He needs to stop crying about the Feds.
11 comments:
How to deal with the problems in New Orleans? Easy.
Evacuate all the law abiding citizens who aren't looting, robbing, raping.
Then just one word to deal with the rest of the town will be needed:
NAPALM
Napalm? I heard it smells good in the morning, but I'll stick by my idea of a good beatdown.
How dare they feel victimized. Right now victims is exactly what they are looking like to me. Let's see how you guys act after 4 days of wading around in sewage without food or water and no help in sight as the government appears to be giving a big collective shrug. Napalm and beatdowns. I can't believe what I just read.
-Shrub
Shrub, wopuld you be out looting stores of plasma TV's in this situation or trying to do what you could to help others? I'm sure the women and men robbing stores of electronics and breaking into ATM's are victims. I say look the other way when people are grabbing necessities. My problem is with the ones sticking up others (who are truly victims) and it being justified by saying they have been oppressed. They are thugs preying on the weak and they deserve to be beatdown. There's no excuse for shooting at rescue helicopters and looting hospitals for dope. That's BS and you know it. You'll be pleasantly surprised that I think the federal government blew it bigtime as far as emergency preparedness goes.
HEAR! HEAR! If I was walking around in chest high water, sewage and what have you, I wouldn't be looking for god damn t.v.'s and other luxuries!! I would be looking for a way out of that f***in' mess! Oh yeah...without having to rob other people who are also walking around in all that shit and without shooting at the f***in' people who are trying to HELP your dumb ass!!! Jeezus! -Brian
Apparently people are being raped and beaten inside the superdome. I wonder if Shrub is going to defend that?
So I guess napalm is an acceptable suggestion but me questioning the priorities of this discussion equals defending rape. Thanks.
Here’s my problem. When there’s lawlessness, then criminals will inevitably seize the opportunity. However, there’s a much more urgent matter at hand. People are DYING AS WE SPEAK because the govt/FEMA/homeland security, etc are acting oblivious and can’t get their ass in gear. FEMA and Chertoff claim to be unaware that people were even at the convention center until Thursday. Bush says “We’re going to help.” Going to? It’s FRIDAY!!!!!!!!! So who’s making the country look bad? The TV thieves?
I just find it very uncool that people have the knee jerk reaction of outrage about the looting when looting pales in the bigger picture. Where’s the help? If the national guard was there from the beginning, we wouldn’t be looking at the current rule of armed mobs would we?
-Shrub
I probably fall somewhere between beatdown and napalm on this topic. I was watching a show about pigs a few weeks ago. They were saying that while it takes hundreds of years to domesticate pigs, it only takes a few weeks for a domesticated pig to revert back to a wild pig if it gets out into the woods. It starts growing hair and it's teeth elongate and it becomes super aggressive. I seem to see an analogy with some of those people. Maybe they had a tenous hold on domestication to begin with.
About 8 years ago, my wife and kids and I were travelling through the Texas panhandle region and got caught in a blizzard. The highway was shut down in front of us and behind us for a couple days. A church openned up its doors to us in the middle of the night and allowed us to sleep on the floor of the chapel along with about a hundred other travellers who were stranded. Ya know, you felt a bit trapped and helpless but NO ONE started tearing the place up or shooting at the snow plows or raping the church ladies who were bringing.
When we got home we wrote a thank you letter to the church and included a check to help them with their kind work.
There's many reasons why the National Guard and FEMA response wasn't up to par. One was that no one knew exactly where it would make landfall. Two I think many of the authorities felt like the storm would weaken since most hurricanes in the Gulf do. Of course, if the Guard had been stationed in huge numbers in NOLA, they would have been underwater too. It's not a complete excuse, but it plays a part. I'm a little sick of the LA authorites crying like spoiled brats for help. Sure they need help, but they could help themselves some too. There are lots of sick and dying people, but there are also thousands upon thousands of able bodied people that are doing nothing besides jump and down begging for help when the TV cameras come by.
Where there's lawlessness, it makes it very difficult to help people. What I want is the lawbreakers to be beatdown, period. And quicker National Guard action might have done so.
Shrub, I don't have an issue with you arguing about the priorities. I enjoy all of our arguments. I just think you didn't get what I was driving at concerning the looters. I hear that some Dallas area Catholic schools are opening their doors to kids displaced by the hurricane. Some Nashville ones are doing the same.
This is undoubtedly cynical and callous, but if they shoot looters then the very first victim caught on camera will ignite a very ugly firestorm of race and PC anger. Every Sharpton wannabe will be railing and ranting like it's the Apocalypse. The first victim will be splashed all over every news show and newspaper in the country. The fact of their crminal actions will not matter compared to being a shot human being.
It's not going to happen, which is why it hasn't happened yet. Too many politicians see the handwriting on the wall if they go there.
Hello All
I have little to add because I generally hope for the best and expect the worst of humanity. But I would address what Mike says about the resulting media firestorm if there is shooting of New Orleans people by the National Guard (or others in that position) as part of the restoration of civic order. That media coverage would not be limited to the United States, because there is already a great deal of scrutiny on this from the European press. Again, not a judgement call from me, but acknowledging a depressing outcome of this.
But cannot let the chance pass to talk about the '89 earthquake of the Bay Area. In the East Bay, there was the Cypress Viaduct, a double-decker freeway that allowed affluent suburban commuters to fly quickly past some of the most poverty-stricken, gang-riddled neighborhoods. I'm sure the people who lived there were accustomed to the sound of car door locks being hit in panic whenever a non-local driver realized they'd made a wrong turn. A very bad neighborhood.
So the earthquake hit at rush hour on October 17 and the double freeway collapsed burying rush hour traffic of minivans and sportscars in concrete and steel in the middle of this neighborhood. Some of the people rescued later said that their world became two feet tall and filled with glass in a matter of seconds.
The first civilian rescuers on the scene who began digging out survivors with their bare hands were the men and women of that chronically depressed neighborhood. They were hailed as heros.
When the freeway was rebuilt, it was named the Mandela Parkway and the new design no longer cut through the housing and streets of the neighborhood. Sure, it remains a neighborhood with its myriad problems, but this is one of those reasons that I still hope for the best in humanity.
Post a Comment