As the water recedes, and investigations dredge up more dirt, it is becoming apparent that when the hurricane hit, people ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. You’d expect the richest country in the world to have all their poop in one sock. But they don’t. They aren’t any more organized than the poor folks on Little Corn Island, in Belize, China or on Guam.
In a way I’m relieved. Because I don’t know that I could live around people who were way more perfect than the rest of the people in the world. I wouldn’t know what to do if things always ran smoothly. It would all be too easy and kind of boring.
On the other hand, it bugs me when I hear people say that the United States is the best country in the world. And it really makes me mad when they use that as an excuse to go drop bombs on a sovereign country who did not attack us.
Oh heck, our hero, Kurt Vonnegut, said it best a couple of days ago during an interview with Bill Maher:
“I’ve still got a passport, but if I showed this now in Portugal or Spain or Italy or Germany or France, or Denmark, or Japan or even Communist China, what it would say about me is that I am not only from the richest country in the world, but the dumbest country in the world.”
And this:
“Well, this country was already financially and spiritually ruined before the hurricane ever hit New Orleans. I thought about the tsunami hitting Indonesia. Nature was a piker compared to human beings when it comes to killing people. The tsunami killed, I think, I calculated about 3% as many people as the Holocaust killed.”
