Katrina Really IS Like September 11
From what I can tell in the last couple days’ reading, Katrina has chiefly served to confirm people in their previously held views. Liberals proclaim it proof of the need for a robust federal government (shades of Bill Moyers in September 2001), conservatives find themselves confirmed in their belief in the overriding importance of social order vigorously enforced, and libertarians regard the disaster and its aftermath as an exemplary failure of government. (Anarchists see government failing at even its core functions. State-accepting libertarians see government as having ignored its core functions for inappropriate pursuits.) Environmentalists amaze themselves with the realization that Katrina proves we need cars with better gas mileage and religious nuts of all persuasions discern the hand of God smiting their – and, need it be said, his own – enemies.
Hooray! Everyone wins! Again!
Comment by Avram —
September 3, 2005 @ 11:35 am
Has Eric Raymond advocated the distribution of guns to everyone in the path of a hurricane yet? (Hm, not quite.)
Comment by Bryan —
September 3, 2005 @ 12:58 pm
Also all Conservatives say how great the current administration is doing their job, huh?
I think there may be something changing.
Comment by Anodyne —
September 3, 2005 @ 2:24 pm
Good call, Jim. But the real winner has to get the pony too, and I don’t see anyone claiming the prize.
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I think it’s safe to say that most people accept some kind of government, but whether you’re a conservative, a liberal, a libertarian or some hybrid, the one thing that people require is good leadership. The PR presidency hasn’t been fun to watch, but it wasn’t under Clinton either. But regardless of one’s political persuasion, the question of perceived judgment and competence of a leader usually tells the tale. The thing that’s had me scratching my head about this administration since 9/11 is pretty basic. Why, after one of the worst tragedies in our history, would the first response be to declare a war of abstraction? The approach has been used to focus attention and to marshal resources for wars on poverty, illiteracy and drugs, but there aren’t too many working professionals and academics in these areas that believe they accomplish much, and many would argue they just distort incentives, and end up conflating issues and wasting resources.
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This administration whipped up Congress and the public to get things moving in the direction they wanted. The wave was so strong that they wound up having a homeland security bureaucracy forced down their throat. What they’ve done with it in the context of a war on terror is produced an uneven and often confused set of priorities with little accountability. It also raised unrealistic expectations.
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It’s probably too soon to tell how well the government’s overall response to the New Orleans disaster will turn out (the immediate response appears to be pretty bad given what was known in advance). But the big problem now is how to disentangle the conceptual mess we’re in right now and sort out priorities. I never saw the point of going to war in Iraq and I doubt it could have been sold to the public without the war on terror frame, but I do believe we have the capability of simultaneously fighting a war and handling emergencies of the scale we’re witnessing on the Gulf coast . I just don’t know why we should be doing it now or how, if need be, we would be prepared to do it in the future with any administration committed to the current path we’re on.
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Who knows though, maybe one day they’ll actually pull off the “Damnation Ally†ending they’ve been promising. You know, we’ll keep fighting off the giant scorpions and mutant cockroaches until suddenly, without rhyme or reason, the earth tilts back on its normal axis and delivers us from atmospheric chaos. It’s not the first time that a script beneath campy strayed from a good book and the author lived to write another day.
Comment by Species 8 —
September 3, 2005 @ 2:50 pm
Nice one pulling “Damnation Alley” out of the ether Anodyne.
Oh why have you forsaken us Jan-Michael Vincent. Only you could single handily wipe out al Qaeda using Airwolf, then rescue teeming thousands with the Landmaster.
Comment by Anon —
September 3, 2005 @ 8:32 pm
Yes, it is at times like this that I think of this piece from the now defunct Adequacy.org. It is not the first piece of its type, but it is the first one I read. There should be an [insert name here] version.
Anon
Pingback by Crooked Timber » » DHS selling Bullshit; CNN not Buying —
September 3, 2005 @ 9:04 pm
[...] manely managing the needs of thousands of displaced people. In a bitter post last night, Jim Henley said that, like September 11th, so far the disaster has “ch [...]
Pingback by Crooked Timber » » DHS selling Bullshit; CNN not Buying —
September 3, 2005 @ 9:07 pm
[...] manely managing the needs of thousands of displaced people. In a bitter post last night, Jim Henley said that, like September 11th, so far the disaster has “ch [...]
Comment by rogergathman —
September 3, 2005 @ 9:57 pm
I actually think it is much simpler than that — no ideological points need to be stressed. We simply need to assess the evidence that we have before our eyes. When, for example, two high officials, Chertoff and Brown, assert that they did not know there were 10,000 people in the Civic Center until Thursday, even though the local government, presumably in touch with the national government, forced them to go there, the questions becomes one of negligent homicide. You could be as libertarian or conservative or liberal — surely the chain of cause and effect that led to death and injury remains the same, no matter what your political convictions.
Sometimes, agency actually counts. Sometimes being the head of an organization should mean that you not only get to pick up incredible perks, but that if you commit a felony, you are imprisoned. I know the crime of murdering a random number of babies and elderly by starvation and neglect doesn’t measure up to, for instance, the crime Martha Stewart committed, but we might consider tapping those people and their subordinates firmly on the wrist, regardless of our ideological convictions.
Trackback by Kieran Healy's Weblog —
September 3, 2005 @ 10:17 pm
DHS selling Bullshit; CNN not Buying
CNN reports, in uncharacteristically blunt terms on Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff’s efforts to exonerate his agency. Defending the U.S….
Pingback by RoyalTS » Blog Archive » Wise words —
September 4, 2005 @ 9:25 am
[...] « Gebrauchte Sinnlichkeit Wise words from Jim Henley via Crooked Timber: From what I can tell in the last couple days’ readin [...]
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
September 4, 2005 @ 9:51 am
Jim, I know that you have said that people of all political persuations should have their political beliefs chastened by this disaster (in addition to simply being horrified by the disaster). But I still don’t see it. The Clinton administration was not that long ago, and they did things pretty much right in this regard. This is not an area where the failures of the Bush administration and the state and local governments involved call all of managerialism into question. All of these governments are kleptocracies.
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And I don’t really see how this would help as we approach the next disaster. Is the lesson that government has encouraged people to live riskily? OK, then how does this help all of people who live in San Francisco? Do we tell them now that they’re on their own? Or all of the other probable disasters that the Bush administration is ignoring? I think that pointing out that governmental failure in this regard is not inevitable is useful.
Comment by Isaac —
September 4, 2005 @ 11:11 am
Isn’t this just “normal politics” in the Kuhnian sense? That is, you shove any empirical fact into your pre-existing framework, regardless whether that makes sense with the ideology? Or maybe each ideology is sufficiently robust so as to support all this contradictory empirical information.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
September 4, 2005 @ 11:53 am
Isaac, isn’t this just the postmodernization of everything that we’ve seen in the Bush era, as the right catches up to certain parts of the left in this respect? Sure, everyone will try to shove empirical facts into their pre-existing framework. But some will do it successfully and some not. If should be apparent, for instance, that any ideology that says that the government can not respond effectively to natural disasters is false, because there are specific counterexamples. Any ideology that says that the problem is one of looting is false, because you can see how many lives were lost (and property destroyed, if you want to include that) by various causes, and looting is no where near the top.
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There are legitimate arguments about how society should plan for and react to these things. But that doesn’t mean the either every argument is legitimate or that no arguments are legitimate.
Pingback by Rua da Judiaria —
September 5, 2005 @ 1:28 pm
[...] destruindo os seus inimigos… Viva, hurra! Todos ganham! Outra vez!†Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings § Katrina Really IS Like September 11 ::A LER:: Ãgua Lisa: As [...]
Comment by troblogdita —
September 7, 2005 @ 6:19 am
It’a a sad and obscene habbit to feed on someone’s suffering just to make a point. I relate to what you posted on that perspective. All sorts of pollitical and social associations try to make the most of this traggedy by using it as an argument boost. But [and I think you have this in mind], knowing it should not prevent us from analising what could be wrong in the way the Bush administration handle the problem. But that should be done AFTER. NOW everyone should be helping. There so much to be done!
Pingback by Ex Cathedra » Blog Archive » Everybody is a Winner —
September 7, 2005 @ 12:42 pm
[...] « No F—ing Postcards Everybody is a Winner A Blog entry I wish I had written, reproduced in whole, without permission: Katrina Re [...]
Pingback by tjic.com » Blog Archive » best meta-commentary yet —
September 7, 2005 @ 1:08 pm
[...] nd thee (oh, and also – a crossbow) best meta-commentary yet http://highclearing.com/index.php/archiv…; From what I can tell [...]
Trackback by Cold Spring Shops —
September 7, 2005 @ 11:48 pm
LOSING CONFIDENCE IN THE INSTITUTIONS?
Laura at 11-D approves of a David Brooks column suggesting shifts in the public mood…. So what about the institutions? … So what about the institutions?
Trackback by BusinessPundit —
September 8, 2005 @ 8:27 am
Interesting Katrina Links
Barry Ritholtz isn’t happy that people are discussing the economic positives of Katrina. Does anyone really believe there are positives? While I don’t normally link to political pieces, I really liked this one, probably becaues it sums up my own…