The White Peril 白禍

Japan's moral problems in facing up to its actions during the 20th century get a lot of play--and for good reason--but it's always important to bear in mind that every society in this part of the world is proficient at whitewashing. Quoth Simon:

[A] very happy 56th birthday to the New China. Follow the link to read the pain of a 7 year old girl's history lessons, numerous counts of foreign aggression and surprisingly little mention of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and other weird political movements.

The article from the People's Daily starts this way:

On October 1, 2005, the People's Republic of China, or "New China" as it is fondly referred to by the entire Chinese people, turns 56 years old.

It gets better from there.

This week's column by the always-acute Anne Applebaum is even more deadly than usual:

In its scale and sheer disregard for common sense, the Louisiana proposal breaks new ground. But I don't want to single out Louisiana: After all, the state's representatives are acting logically, even if they aren't spending logically. They are playing by the rules of the only system for distributing federal funds that there is, and that system allocates money not according to the dictates of logic, but to the demands of politics and patronage.

Nor does this logic apply only to obvious boondoggles such as federal transportation spending, the last $286 billion tranche of which funded Virginia horse trails, Vermont snowmobile trails, a couple of "bridges to nowhere" in rural Alaska and decorative trees for a California freeway named after Ronald Reagan (a president who once vetoed a transportation bill because it contained too much pork). On the contrary, this logic applies even to things we supposedly consider important, such as homeland security. Because neither the administration nor Congress is prepared to do an honest risk assessment, and because no one dares say that there are states at almost no risk of terrorist attack, a good chunk of homeland security funding is distributed according to formulas that give minimum amounts to every state. The inevitable result: In 2004 the residents of Wyoming received, per capita, seven times more money for first responders than the residents of New York City.

Unfortunately, I can't identify the buddy who sent it to me--if his unanimously leftist colleagues found out he was communicating with libertarians, they might tar and feather him--but I think I can get away with quoting his parting shot: "I am so glad to live in a democracy that is free from the pork and corruption of Japan's... (laughing so hard I am crying, or would that be vice versa?)." Uh-huh. The only reason we Americans living in Japan can get away with smirking at the degree of pork-barrel transport and construction spending here is that the federal ministries are so unbelievably profligate they make Washington look frugal by comparison.

As Applebaum says, most people don't get too exercised over waste on infrastructure because it's not a very sexy topic. (Prime Minister Koizumi's push for Japan Post privatization ran into this problem, too--how many citizens want to sit around talking about the financial structure of the postal service?) There's also the fact that things actually do get built. It's hard to arouse voters' ire over poor allocation and inefficient use of resources because those problems are not as easily visible as roads and bridges that don't materialize. And even boondoggles--perhaps especially boondoggles--provide employment.

Applebaum's suggestion is this:

But maybe at least it is time for a change of terminology. After all, taking $200 million of public money to build a bridge, name it after yourself and get reelected isn't merely "pork." Demanding $250 billion of public money for your hurricane-damaged state--in the hope that voters will ignore all the mistakes you made before the hurricane struck--isn't just "waste" either. As I say, corruption comes in many forms. But whatever form it comes in, it will be easier for voters to identify if it's called by its true name.

In an age in which there are news agencies that consider it an affront to call terrorists "terrorists," I'm not sure the idea will catch on. It's a good one, though.

Added at 21:24: Virginia Postrel points out that there are non-infrastructure pork provisions that would be much more useful to cut if we meant business about curbing spending. Alex Kerr made a pertinent point a few years ago--though he was speaking of Japan and in a slightly different context:

At a bank in Tokyo, you can make 10 plus 10 equal 30 if you like--but somewhere far away, at a pension fund in Osaka, for example, it may be that 10 plus 10 will now equal only 15. Or even farther away, implications of this equation may require that a stretch of seashore in Hokkaido must be cemented over.

He was speaking of the shell game Japan plays that makes it seem to defy economic laws that obtain elsewhere, but I think he also illustrated one of the reasons it's hard to get people to think of government spending in big, big, big Jonathan Rauch terms: the different parts of the machine don't seem to be related to each other. How agricultural subsidies could have implications for homeland security resources, say, is (understandably) not something most people give a lot of thought to. With infrastructure spending, on the other hand, there's a direct, vivid connection to a current news story with lots of human interest angles. That doesn't mean that people will necessarily be spurred by Hurricane Katrina to pressure their congresscritters to rein it in a bit, but that seems to be the best hope.

Via John, whose blog would be a daily read of mine if he posted that often but really no pressure buddy at all seriously none, here's a great post by Moebius Stripper on...well, I'll let her tell it:

I've been tutoring a high school kid for the past two months. The kid's in grade 12; when I met him, he was doing math at a grade two or three level. This is not an exaggeration: he couldn't add or multiply single-digit numbers without a calculator. And this wasn't just rustiness, as this inability extended to not being able to compute things like 6+0, 5*1, or 3*0. In other words, he didn’t know what numbers were. Not surprisingly, he couldn't solve linear equations, add fractions, or make heads or tails of the most simple word problem.

I met with him every other day, two hours at a time. And, to his credit, what he lacked in mathematical skill, he more than made up for in persistence. He worked diligently, if not terribly successfully, on his homework. We spent a lot of time on the basics - fractions, simple algebra, the meaning of equations. We also spent a lot of time - far, far more than I'd have liked - on how to use the [expletive regretfully deleted] graphing calculator to perform tasks that every student should know how to do with a pencil and paper.

Numeracy is hugely, hugely important in a very general sense; and somehow the curriculum specialists and teachers seem to have found ways to remove basic, intuitive numeracy from students. Or at least they make it permissible for them to use calculators for so many basic operations that they don't even realize it's possible to be good with numbers.

Typhoon 17 is headed toward Kanto (Chiba Prefecture at the moment), and the JMA is warning that we may get heavy rains starting tonight or tomorrow. It's just off the Izu Islands right now, with top wind speeds of around 90 mph, but the storm itself is running basically parallel to Honshu, so it won't actually make landfall.

Of course, that's nothing compared with what Hurricane Rita is threatening to do to eastern Texas and western Louisiana. CNN's coverage this go-round is a scene I cannot make, so I'm generally going by on-line sources. Hope everyone stays safe.

Last week, a bunch of people wrote to say, "Wow! I had no idea there was another American expat in Japan who was right of center!" It kind of puzzled me because, for one thing, this guy, who's more visibly conservative than I am, has a blog with a wide readership. And for another, I've never really felt all that marooned among leftists--and bear in mind that I'm not only gay but also employed in educational publishing. I only have one or two American friends, but among the colleagues and acquaintances I frequently discuss such things with, I think the majority supported the Iraq invasion, for example, even if they don't like the way the Bush administration is handling the reconstruction. I'm kind of anti-social and consort with homosexuals and work in a famously left-leaning industry, so I figured I'd see what Gaijin Biker's take was, since he's different on all counts. He said:

I went to an election day barbecue party last year in my Bush/Cheney t-shirt and I had lots of expat guys coming up to me to argue (plus, more entertainingly, slightly drunk Japanese girls telling me Bush is evil).

The typical American I-banker is a New Yorker from a well-off family who went to an ivy league college; those folks tend to be liberals, if of the limousine variety. Choosing a quantitatively-oriented job that pays well screens out some of the extreme tree-huggers, but there are still plenty left in the pool. And once you get outside the U.S. and look at bankers from Britain, France, etc., the Bush-hatred escalates in parallel with the love of nanny-state socialism.

The amazing thing I have learned is that someone can be a razor-sharp capitalist when it comes to analyzing companies or managing money, but still favor extreme liberal positions like super-high tax rates, massive social programs, gun control, etc. Look at George Soros!

That "Britain, France, etc." part applies to other industries, too, BTW--especially law, but also consulting, health care, and import-export. There's nothing more comically irritating than standing in a Tokyo fag bar with a German on your left and a Frenchman on your right--ganging up on you about how America is getting all arrogant as the world's policeman--and having to bite your lip to avoid going all, "Don't give me that crap! The only reason we are here having this conversation is that MY grandfathers kept YOUR grandfathers, honeychile, from killing YOUR grandfathers, bitch." Yes, I have a thing about this.

Maybe part of it is that Japanese electoral politics tends to be dull; the last few weeks are a real anomaly. The locals don't keep the air buzzing with the kind of talk about politics that would stimulate up expats to bring up what's going on at home. Only those of us who are already news junkies really tune in. Be all of that as it may, I'm up-front about my political positions, and I don't recall having had any tiresome confrontations with leftists who wouldn't back down when they're shocked to discover that I voted for Bush (and, in 2000, Santorum) and support the WOT and believe in privatizing everything but the Capitol Building.

Eric, who's a Pennsylvania native like me, has listed some projects that funnel federal pork into the commonwealth. As he says, each one is modest in scope, but together they contribute to government bloat. Besides, even a small amount of wasteful spending is, well, wasteful.

I'm not sure what the most wasteful federally-funded PA project in recent memory is. Being next door to the domain of Robert "Yes, West Virginia, there is a Santa Clause" Byrd kind of makes you complacent about these things. However, I was impressed by the prodigality and why-is-Washington-involved-in-this? pointlessness of a waterfront redevelopment initiative in Philadelphia, for which then-Representative Joseph Hoeffel secured over $10 million a few years ago. (Note Hoeffel's statist paranoia over what private control might do to the site.) It's not an ongoing project, so I don't think it's eligible for inclusion in Eric's list.

Added later: Perhaps I should point out that if you're thinking you vaguely recognize Hoeffel's name, it's because he was the Democrat who ran against Arlen Specter for the PA US Senate seat that was up for election last year. One of his campaign catch-phrases? "Fiscal restraint," naturally.

What Connie said.

I know that a lot of us are heartily sick of this topic, but for those who can still take it, the following might be instructive.

I write, of course, from Japan. You know, the Japan that makes social-democrat/third-way types feel all warm and fuzzy? The Japan in which enlightened technocrats, enshrined in the federal ministries in Kasumigaseki and insulated from elections and politicking and evil market forces and stuff, guide the nation toward a bright nationally-insured future? Yeah, the bloom is somewhat off the economic rose, but in social policy terms, a lot of my left-leaning acquaintances still swoon over the degree of ministry control here.

Well, I will tell you as someone who has lived here for a decade: what you hear about disaster preparedness ALWAYS involves local intiatives. Sometimes, municipal governments are involved; other times, it's smaller public institutions. 1 September, the anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, was Disaster Prevention Day here. Apparently, over a million people participated in demonstrations and drills and things. Our apartment building's management company distributed leaflets to our mailboxes, outlining what would happen if a quake hit and our building were declared unsafe until inspection. New survival gadgets are always cropping up in human interest features on NHK.

None of this means that the Ministry of Land, Transport, and Infrastructure, for instance, doesn't get involved in a big-time disaster. What it does mean is that...I mean, read this at Q and O. Bruce McQuain corrals a lot of criticisms of response at various levels of government and weighs their merits. One in particular is--well, I was going to call it butt-stupid, but that would be an insult to butts everywhere. Not to mention to the average stupid person, who could probably be relied on not to say anything quite this inane:

If Allbaugh were not an amateur, he would have known that communities, "faith-based organizations" and the private sector become overwhelmed by disasters more modest than this one. In a crisis the federal government should be the first responder, not the last, to take charge, not wait to be asked.

I don't know. Individual organizations may be feeling overwhelmed, but the overall response by private and local organizations seems to be working a damned sight better than anything the government has come up with. The issue isn't just that the constitution doesn't permit the President to barge in and tell a state governor, "Now, little lady, you just stand back and let the big boys handle this"--important as that is. It's also that only locals know local conditions. Level-headed people who are prepared can find ways to keep going until the government does, in fact, have a chance to get to them if necessary (via Joanne Jacobs).

In Japan, what we're told is this: A disaster may render you unreachable. It may cut you off from communication networks and utilities. The appropriate government agencies (starting at the neighborhood level and moving upward depending on the magnitude of the damage) will respond as quickly as they can, but you may be on your own for days until they do. Prepare supplies. Learn escape routes. Then learn alternate escape routes. Know what your region's points of vulnerability are. Get to know your neighbors (especially the elderly or infirm) so you can help each other out and account for each other. Follow directions if you're told to evacuate. Stay put if you aren't. Participate in the earthquake preparation drills in your neighborhood.

If that's the attitude of people in collectivist, obedient, welfare-state Japan, it is beyond the wit of man why any American should be sitting around entertaining the idea that Washington should be the first (or second or fifteenth) entity to step in and keep the nasty wind and rain and shaky-shaky from hurting you. Sheesh.

Oh, and you have to read this post by Andrea. You have to keep reading even after you think all the funny parts are over. You have to read to the end. I second Ilyka's comment, trans-Pacifically. I also get where Connie's coming from.

Added on 13 September: Thanks to Virginia Postrel for the link--not to mention the flattery. I can think of far better sources of news about Japan than my blog, but we'll just let that pass for now. She adds a few points that differentiate earthquakes from typhoons and are worth noting:

Of course, in an earthquake, you have no warning--not a couple of days to get out of town (assuming you have transportation, of course). And there's always that question of where to store the earthquake supplies, since the house could collapse on them, making them inaccessible.

They tell you to choose the corner you think is most structually sound, but, of course, you don't really know what that is until the quake hits and your walls either don't give or do. In a new building (such as ours, fortunately), you almost always have shear walls on the exterior. They can help ensure that the only things that are likely to fail are tall cabinets and shelves and things, so you have to find space for your stash that isn't near furniture. That's no contemptible feat in the average Tokyo apartment, but it's better than expecting the ceiling to come down on your head. My own solution, if that's the word, is to keep my major survival kit in the bedroom but to have supplies (bottled water and flashlights and things) in other places around the apartment also, under the assumption that if the quake is so strong it takes all of them out, I'll probably be too dead to need them anyway.

While I think of it, Dean linked (no trackback) and got a short but good discussion going about whether my comparison between the US and Japan is valid. Justin at Classical Values also linked, and he and Eric and Dennis have a great crew of commenters; it'll be interesting to see what they have to say.

Added on 15 September: Why, how sweet. This nice professor from Tennessee also linked to this post. I don't know much about him, but a little digging reveals that he has a sister who lives in Sevier County. We know what that means, don't we, boys? This guy's sister lives in the county where Dolly Parton was born. And WE LOVE DOLLY TO TINY LITTLE BITS! So welcome, Instapundit readers.

Michael's been having some interesting discussions in bars lately. He talked to a couple who were at the Superdome during the hurricane and gave him a thorough accounting of the conditions there. It's a good read, reassuring in some parts and disturbing in others. I hope they have some time to catch their wind before they head back to New Zealand; the 20-hour flight time would probably be enough to finish me off after that ordeal, even if my own bed were waiting at the end.

The kind of bed that was waiting...no, let's not go there. Michael's other conversation was with the manager/bartender of a gay bar who was straight. There are a lot of those here in Tokyo, too; some owners prefer that the bartenders be sort of inaccessible-fantasy material for the patrons. That's easier to do if they're not gay and therefore won't be tempted to date a customer. Tough break if you're hot for one, though.

Dean links to this post by Mike Hendrix at Cold Fury, in which he flays leftist bloggers for pooh-poohing Tom Ridge's warnings about disaster preparedness. I agree with Dean that it's good to remember that this is not an exhaustive survey of the opinions of liberal bloggers, and, having clicked through to some of the posts myself, I think that the point several of them were intended to make was that Ridge's warnings were vague and directionless. That doesn't mean the posts in question were well argued, only that they weren't all dismissing the idea of disaster preparedness itself. The points Hendrix makes are good overall, though.

The comments are as interesting to read as the post itself, BTW. This one is from a woman who sounds exactly like the people I was talking about yesterday:

We lived on an island regularly visited by typhoons and we kept three days of water and nonperishable foodstuffs on hand. It was not easy, and it took me time to build up our disaster kit--and then we moved to an area where snowstorms were the problem and we had to do it again but different (I've been without power or water for one week because of a blizzard). Again, it was harder than most people here seem to imagine, but it was doable. Cans of beans, a bottle of bleach, ramen noodles (these make a great snack when they are uncooked--like chips), raisins, peanut butter, rice, boxes of instant mashed potatoes, vegetables you dehydrate yourself (in the oven or on a screen in the sun if you need to) and bottles of water you fill are not that expensive when carefully purchased on sale over time. And the thing about a hurricane is you have some advance notice, so you can start filling up water containers before it knocks out your water supply. Since we always figure it's our duty to help others, we lay in enough extra supplies to share, too. On an airman’s salary.

Plain, old-fashioned resourcefulness. As she says, when your income is very low, you need to plan very carefully, but you look out for rock-bottom sale prices when they're advertised, you lay in just one or two items at a time, and you figure that someone else is probably going to end up more screwed than you are, so you'll need to lend a hand.

I'm sorry I keep harping on this--as I mentioned a few days ago, my own earthquake kit was getting kind of slipshod, so Atsushi and I got everything back in order over the weekend. I myself am not a paragon. But the idea of simply not being ready is one that I can't fathom.

Added at lunch: You know how I just said I was sorry for harping on this? Well, I lied.

If I hear or read one more person's gassing that the sheer magnitude of the damage from Hurricane Katrine means that only the federal government could handle it, I am going to go postal. Situations like this are exactly when you need all those little nuances of on-the-spot knowledge that only locals know: Harrison Street is backed up, so let's try the back way over Keystone Avenue...What? The 7-Eleven's closed? The 7-Eleven doesn't close! But okay...There's a 24-hour mini-mart at the gas station a mile up. Let's try there. Washington doesn't know whether evacuating your city will take 48 or 72 hours, where the best places to go to alert the homeless are, or which churches and civic groups can be relied upon to help get things set up at shelters when they arrive. The federal government can descend on an area with a lot of expensive equipment and trained personnel, but they have to learn their way around by feeling things out or asking questions.

Bill Whittle has his latest essay up. It's finely written, and I don't mean to take anything away from it when I say that it's a shame everything he says in it isn't so obvious as not to be worth mention. I grew up in a working-class family. Of my parents' closest dozen or so friends, someone was always laid off, or needed an expensive hospital stay, or had his car break down on him. People helped each other out, and everyone got turns at both giving and receiving generosity.

You took assistance with gratitude when you needed it, but it was shameful to be a permanent charity case, and there was no sense of entitlement to other people's largess. One of the (many) times my father was laid off by Bethlehem Steel, he took three part-time jobs--including one at the 7-Eleven--to keep us afloat. As soon as we returned to relative solvency, my parents were back in the group that was inviting people from church over for dinner when they were in straitened circumstances. That's what you did.

I know that losing your Rust Belt job is not the same as going through a hurricane. I'm less trying to compare the situations than making a point about the mindset. I've spent my entire adult life bitching about the entitlement mentality in America, but this past week has made my jaw drop, as person after person interviewed on the news said, essentially, "Where's the government with our Carr's Water Biscuits and Evian?" Some of these people had their children standing right by them. Great lesson from Mom and Dad imparted there, huh? There's nothing embarrassing about not providing for your own kids as long as you're EXTRA CRABBY to show you mean business when you try to get the government to do it.

And, yes, I know: some of the complaints were from people who had been told to wait in location X for a bus that didn't arrive, and some people had newborns in maternity wards that they couldn't bring themselves to be separated from until the last minute, and yet other people had bedridden elders to take into account. Obviously, I'm not criticizing people who were making a good-faith effort to fulfill their responsibilities. They can be forgiven for happening to be caught by CNN in an unguarded moment as they were forced to make wrenching choices on the fly. I also know that I'm asking for trouble as a childless bourgeois gay guy passing judgment on how some parents run their households.

All I can say is, I grew up around humble people who were constantly on the lookout for un-self-aggrandizing ways to serve others and who did everything in their power to provide for themselves before expecting handouts. I know those attitudes when I see them. They've certainly been in evidence this past week, but much less than one might have expected. It's sad.

There's an old student of mine in law school at Tulane; I just heard back from him that he got out before the hurricane and that BU will take him until the end of the year if necessary. I think he left for Boston this weekend. Very cheering news. I know a lot of people have had more disrupted than their coursework, but every person from the Gulf Coast who finds a workable contingency plan is one fewer to worry about.

A few days ago, Dean's World contributor Mary Madigan posted a short entry tentatively comparing the reconstruction of New Orleans to that of Kobe after the Great Hanshin Earthquake ten years ago. She cited the Kobe municipal government's shiny, happy version of the Kobe rebuilding. A commenter piped up with the observation that Japan is a law-abiding, conformist society, the implication being that we can expect things to proceed more efficiently in Japan than in the US, with its competing needs and preferences.

I don't think there's any problem with placing the emphasis on Kobe's recovery. Human beings live on hope, after all, and the reconstruction of the city really does demonstrate many of the upsides of social and economic liberalization. Given what New Orleans looks like now, it's a significant comfort to have a real-life example of another first world city that was wrecked and rebuilt in recent memory. Let's not get too high on those shrine-incense fumes, though, and forget that government screw-ups regarding the Kobe earthquake didn't stop with inadequate building and land reclamation codes. Reason has what, in my experience, is the best summary of the multitude of little problems that helped delay recovery in Kobe:

A post-quake report issued by the Kobe YMCA is filled with anecdotes such as this one: Three days after the quake, two women from Kobe Citizens Central Hospital appeared at city hall asking for 10 volunteers to help carry water at the hospital, located about a mile away. Water duty, they explained to city workers, pulled too many skilled nurses from more-urgent medical tasks. Officials on the first floor of city hall turned the women away. Yet on the eighth floor of the same building was a list of 5,000 registered volunteers willing to help any way they could. When the women came back for more help, officials told them to return later with a written request.

Similar bureaucratic procedures beset rescue and recovery efforts at the national level as well. Officials turned away doctors from the United States because they were not certified to practice medicine in Japan. They quarantined European search dogs while Kobe residents picked through the rubble by hand. Even offers of help from within Japan were refused: Although a disabled phone system presented a critical problem to search-and-rescue efforts, officials refused to distribute cellular phones donated by Nippon Motorola because they didn't want to issue the required telephone identification numbers. Officials initially rejected an early offer of medical help from the Japanese Association of Acute Medicine because they were unfamiliar with that organization; they changed their minds a week later as a flu virus raged through evacuation shelters.

...

Such responses were in marked contrast to succor offered from less-official sectors of Japanese society: Immediately after the earthquake, the Kobe YMCA was swamped with volunteers, many of whom had been turned away by city hall. YMCA managers quickly established an emergency headquarters and organized the volunteers into teams that canvassed damaged neighborhoods and reported back on what victims needed most. By bicycle and on foot--and wearing identifying numbers normally used for YMCA sporting events--volunteers delivered food, water, clothes, and blankets. Even members of the yakuza--Japan's organized crime gangs--used their networks to bring food, water, and other supplies into the area. Right-wing political groups, whose loudspeaker trucks regularly roam city streets calling for the restoration of the emperor, dropped their act and used their trucks to deliver hot tea to stricken neighborhoods. This all happened as boxes of instant noodles donated by local merchants sat outside city hall in the rain, untouched and undistributed.

Surveying the post-quake landscape in April 1995, the then-editor of Tokyo Business Today, Hiroshi Fukunga [sic--I assume the name is Fukunaga and this is a typo.--SRK], summarized a disturbing but inescapable lesson from the Kobe experience. "It now seems clear that even in a national emergency the nation's pen-pushers will not swerve a millimeter from official procedures, even if fellow citizens' lives are at risk," wrote Fukunga. "While the hours slopped by and thousands lost their lives in the fiery ruins left by the Kobe disaster, Japanese officials' top priorities were observing protocol and following precedent."

The above is only a tiny fraction of the piece, which follows the reconstruction through 2000 or so.

In Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, immediate relief is still the highest priority; but as recovery in structural terms begins in earnest, it's a good idea to bear in mind that the Gulf States could be in for some of the same problems as Kobe was. America doesn't have Japan's idiosyncratic property laws or collectivist society, no; but red tape is red tape in any culture. (Remember Hurricane Andrew?) There is plenty of time for more recriminations to be hurled back and forth...with the attendant guilt-fueled increases in funding for programs that have proved useless this time around, creation of redundant new agencies of dubitable use, and adventures in showy micromanagement designed to reassure everyone that the government is "doing something."

Yes, and yes (also via Michael). And while we're at it, Dean's new contributor Aziz Poonawalla has this to say. And Eric is worried about whether all the finger-pointing going on is creating a serious emotional rift in America--spooky for me to read because I'm over here and have no way to gauge what he's talking about.

We don't control nature, people. There's a lot we can do that we couldn't do even a century ago, but natural disasters are still disastrous. Even relatively routine storms can stop air and rail transport or cause flooding that traps people. This was a huge storm in an especially vulnerable area. It's beginning to seem that the local governments involved could, indeed, have prepared better, but let's not kid ourselves. To hear some people talk, there should have been a way for the Big, Benevolent Government to make Hurricane Katrina little more inconvenient than a fire drill at the office.

Please. Even if every single soul in New Orleans, Biloxi, and Mobile had evacuated and were now safe and sound, there would still be sunken oil platforms, inoperative ports, and thousands of non-existent houses and livelihoods to contend with now. As it is, many people decided to stay and take their chances, and some didn't have the means to evacuate. The area is large and full of hazards. Law enforcement, search-and-rescue teams, and medical personnel are going to be receiving a steady stream of conflicting information and competing emergencies. They'll be making snap decisions that don't always put them on the better side of public relations when CNN shoves a microphone in the face of someone who ended up getting the short end of the stick. This is heartbreaking, but it's not really avoidable.

Despite our wondrous transport and information network, there are people still alive now who will not be saved. We're in the best position out of all the peoples in history to deal with this sort of situation even so. The global warming crowd is braying about fossil fuel use, but that's what powers the helicopters and buses and trucks that are many people's only hope for getting out of the afflicted areas in one piece. Or getting clean water (in plastic bottles) and non-perishable (processed) food. Now that nature has finished her spree, all those in charge can do is, essentially, muddle through as best they can. That's no one's fault.

Added on 3 September: Connie has a few choice words for people who think they can rely absolutely on the government to save them from harm. Yes, protecting its citizens is a primary government responsibility. But one of the ways natural disasters tend to cause devastation is by incapacitating and isolating people; responsible individuals have to recognize that they may be on their own for several days and prepare accordingly.