Third World Country
After viewing images of the Indonesian tsunami, I—like many Americans—felt an odd whiff of smugness amidst the horror. It went something like, “Well, sucks to be them that’s for sure; but boy, am I ever glad I live in a country where, first, given our high-tech infrastructure, such a disaster is unlikely to happen, and second, if it were to, we’d be able to stave off suffering by responding instantaneously and comprehensively.”
After viewing images New Orleans and Biloxi in the wake of hurricane Katrina, though, my smugness is all but gone. It’s apparent to me that the U.S. is no less susceptible to such massive natural disasters and hardly, if at all, better prepared for responding to them.
I had thought that the scale of suffering following the tsunami was a function of those places being in the so-called “third world.” Certainly, that would never happen in a “first world” superpower like the Good Ol’ US of A.
But guess what? It turns out that when things like this happen—as they inevitably will—we’re a “third world” country, too.
No phone. No lights. No motorcar. Not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, as primitive as can be.
I have no qualifications whatsoever to comment upon the problems associated with getting relief to those in need down South; hell, it’s all I can do to get to the grocery store myself—and here, they’re open 24 hours a day.
But it sure seems to me that everything (except the rising floodwaters) has moved awfully slowly. I mean, if we, as a country, have the resources to move like 200,000 troops half a world away and keep them there, well-fed and clothed for over two years now already, shouldn’t we have the resources to evacuate a tenth that many people from a major metropolis and get them someplace warm and dry a few hundred miles away?
Well maybe, if we weren’t a third world country…
After viewing images New Orleans and Biloxi in the wake of hurricane Katrina, though, my smugness is all but gone. It’s apparent to me that the U.S. is no less susceptible to such massive natural disasters and hardly, if at all, better prepared for responding to them.
I had thought that the scale of suffering following the tsunami was a function of those places being in the so-called “third world.” Certainly, that would never happen in a “first world” superpower like the Good Ol’ US of A.
But guess what? It turns out that when things like this happen—as they inevitably will—we’re a “third world” country, too.
No phone. No lights. No motorcar. Not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, as primitive as can be.
I have no qualifications whatsoever to comment upon the problems associated with getting relief to those in need down South; hell, it’s all I can do to get to the grocery store myself—and here, they’re open 24 hours a day.
But it sure seems to me that everything (except the rising floodwaters) has moved awfully slowly. I mean, if we, as a country, have the resources to move like 200,000 troops half a world away and keep them there, well-fed and clothed for over two years now already, shouldn’t we have the resources to evacuate a tenth that many people from a major metropolis and get them someplace warm and dry a few hundred miles away?
Well maybe, if we weren’t a third world country…
posted by Professor Dave at 10:49 AM
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