Mini-rant time.

I've been following a thread at Bitch PhD and posting occasionally about the government's responsibility to protect its citizens against disasters, or at least to mitigate their hardships, and its failures in responding to Katrina. Here are some things I disagree with:

"I want to help people, don't get me wrong. It's just not the government's job to protect everybody. People need to be responsible for themselves. Otherwise the government controls our lives. And who needs more of that?"

"Please remind me. Where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that the federal government is responsible for funding city infrastructure? I'm really confused. When you choose to live in a coastal region, especially a coastal region below sea level, you must take some accountability for that choice. The government didn't make you move there. I guess some people will find any reason to assault Bush's presidency. I'm sure Kerry would have found a way to raise the city above sea level by now.Sheesh. I probably sound cold hearted, but I'm not. I will be helping with money and my time, once they allow folks back in. I, like many others, had family in NO and Mississippi. They lost most everything, but they haven't turned to the government (for which I'm proud). Instead, they've turned to friends and family - which is as it should be. My point is that it is not government's role to bail these people out. There has to be some accountability somewhere."

"Accountability" in this context sounds to me like code for "it's your problem, not mine". Not everyone is lucky enough to have families who can help them out. Very few of us are free to pick up and relocate to a disaster-free area . . . nor is that even possible. Not everyone could have evacuated even if they wanted to! Blaming the victim is extremely lame.

From the altruistic perspective, I would argue that is IS the role of the federal government to protect its people. Would you want to live in a society that didn't give a shit about its citizens? Was the Gilded Age actually so fun for anyone but the robber barons? No, it was not. My ancestors may be proud that they subsisted on sharecropping and mining and didn't have any kind of Medicare, but I much prefer that I didn't grow up in a company town or die of scarlet fever. Do I have Henry Clay Frick to thank for that? No.

More materialistically, what happened in New Orleans affects the whole country, and so it is in our best interests as Americans to protect the Gulf Coast even if we have no personal connection to New Orleans at all.

It's the government's fucking JOB to "bail these people out." That is what we pay them to do. If not, what are we paying them for?

(Aside from funding parasites like me, who do obscure things to cells which may or may not ever contribute infinitessimally to curing cancer . . . )

Finally, does it not occur to some people that there might be really valid reasons for complaining about Bush's presidency? That those of us who dissent might, oh I don't know, have serious problems with how this administration is running things rather than just really liking to whinge? Since when is challenging the government an automatically bad thing? Is this not a nation built on challenging despotism? I will not even elaborate on the pot calling the kettle black [Monica Lewinsky].

Okay, I think it's time to take a break from politics for a while. Deep breaths.