On A More Serious Note

So I've been hearing on the radio (I'm not watching TV these days, thank goodness) about all the horrible things going on in New Orleans, what with the riots and the looting and the completely unsanitary conditions. I won't go into any details...if you're not living under a rock, you know what's been happening.

And I, like many Americans, am confused as to why, in such a wealthy nation as this, with an actual disaster response infrastructure, living conditions have degraded to such a point where police on the streets are outgunned and afraid for their lives. I know that these things take time...I have this picture in my mind of this behemoth government body that slowly strides halfway across the country, stopping a few times to catch its breath. But I suppose that's how this country is. Have we as a country, like our selves, become so obese with our own greed and wealth that we don't have the energy to help ourselves quickly?

I don't have a whole lot of money, but I did send some to America's Second Harvest. I also encourage anyone who is within 300 miles of the devastation to open your homes to some of the displaced families. You can find more information at www.hurricanehousing.org.

My dad is in Thailand doing relief work for the tsunami that hit back in December, and he tells me that there are still people living in tents, nine months after their homes were destroyed. One of the things he's working on is a database that will help stop redundancy between different charitable organizations. Will the same problem happen here? I remember lots of people who weren't eligible for money after 9/11, even though their jobs and workplaces were lost. I also remember that so many people gave money to the Red Cross for 9/11 that they couldn't handle that much money and they ended up distributing it to other areas.

I guess I wish I could be more hopeful about this situation, but seeing the degradation of society and the emergence of the raw ugliness of human nature in such a short period of time upsets me. I'm just waiting for the hope at the bottom of Pandora's Box to appear.