Re-Primitivized Man

[Dieval]

Quote by: article September 4, 2005 BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement In the Atlantic Monthly a few years back, Robert D. Kaplan went to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other failed jurisdictions of West Africa and concluded that many of the "citizens" of these "states," roaming the streets raping and killing, belonged to a phenomenon called "re-primitivized man." Anyone watching TV in recent days will have seen plenty of "re-primitivized man," not in Liberia or Somalia, but in Louisiana. Cops smashing the Wal-Mart DVD cabinet so they can get their share of the booty along with the rest of the looters, gangs firing on a children's hospital and on rescue helicopters, hurricane victims being raped in the New Orleans Convention Center. . . . If you're minded, as many of the world's anti-Americans are, to regard the United States as a depraved swamp, it was a grand old week: Mother Nature delivered the swamp, but plenty of natives supplied the depravity. Not all of them, of course. But it doesn't really matter if it's only 5 percent or 2 percent or 0.01 percent if everybody else is giving them free rein. Not exactly the most impressive law enforcement agency even on a good day, the New Orleans Police Department sent along some 80 officers to rescue the rape victims trapped in the Convention Center, but were beaten back by the mob. Meanwhile, the ever more pitiful governor was, unlike many of her fellow Louisianans, safe on dry land but still floundering way out of her depth, unable to stand up to the lawlessness even rhetorically or to communicate anything other than emotive impotence.

The Article

TV News showing the cops looting..


I can understand taking food and drink to survive IN AN EMERGENCY situation, but do you really need DVD's too? Please...

Should these people, including the police, be prosecuted for looting anything and everything?

[belverron]

Quote by: William Strunk Jr. -ize Do not coin verbs by adding this tempting suffix. Many good and useful verbs do end in -ize.... But there is a growing list of abominations.... Be suspicious of ize; let your ear and your eye guide you. Never tack -ize onto a noun to create a verb. Usually you will discover that a useful verb already exists.

Yes, I do realize I'm not contributing anything. I might feel guilty about that if this weren't the eight hundredth thread about the hurricane.

[Dieval]

If this should have been added to another thread that already existed, my appologies and please delete.

[PatrickHenry]

Any one with reliable evidence against them should be prosecuted for looting. Just because a city is paralyzed doesn't allow for lawlessness.

Imagine this in a personal context. You find a person helpless and rigid on the sidewalk. Is it okay to take the contents of his wallet? No, you may examine his wallet to determine his identity and any possible medical conditions, but his helplessness does not permit you to assume he won't be needing his money.

Those cops need some determined questioning by robbery detectives.

[Nono]

In a society awash with weapons -- i.e. brute force -- whose all-pervading slogan is Me first!, what do you expect?

It's shocking and deplorable, but anyone who's surprised wasn't paying attention.

[RickSp]

New Orleans had a high crime rate before the hurricane. No news there. The National Guard and meaningful assistance didn't show up for nearly a week after the disaster. There was some looting. Surprise, surprise.

Anyone who knows anything about distaters response will tell you that the first 24-48 hours are critical both in getting help to the most critically in need and to ensure law and order is maintained. The Department of Homeland Security did effectively nothing for 5 days.

We have seen it all before. Condi Rice claimed no one could have predicted the collapse of the levies even though that was precisely what FEMA and the Corps of Engineers had predicted over and over again. And Rumsfeld claimed that the chaos following the US invasion of Iraq could not have been predicted even though that was exactly what the State Department predicted. Incompetence or indifference? Or does it matter?

So far there have been dozens of reports that FEMA has been hindering and not helping the recovery. So far the Bush administration has not been part of the solution but has been a big part of the problem.

Cut the red tape, Lott says
Red tape hampering far-flung volunteers
Red Tape Hinders Help for Katrina Victims
Volunteer rescuers tangled in red tape
Military Expresses Frustration Over Red Tape

And the Conservatives on this board are happily blaming the victims. I suppose this isn't surprising either.

[SteveA]

Quote by: RickSp And the Conservatives on this board are happily blaming the victims. I suppose this isn't surprising either.

Thank you for your post, Rick, but I've got to ask a question on this part. Maybe I misunderstood it, but shouldn't looters and rioters be held accountable for their own actions? I recognize some of the looting could be justifiable but I'm not certain what you meant by that last paragraph.

[RickSp]

Quote by: SteveA Thank you for your post, Rick, but I've got to ask a question on this part. Maybe I misunderstood it, but shouldn't looters and rioters be held accountable for their own actions? I recognize some of the looting could be justifiable but I'm not certain what you meant by that last paragraph.

I am not justifying looting. There is no justification for theft. On the other hand, over 30,000 people in the center of a flooded city were effectively abandoned without food or water for almost a week. It is not unreasonable that folks will start looking for food and water. I saw video of a liquor store on Canal street which had been "looted". The liquor was effectively untouched but all the snack food and soda had been carried away. Was it wrong to steal the snakc food. Yes, it was. Do I blame forks who are hungry and desperate. No, I don't.

At the same time it isn't particularly surprising that a criminal element will take advantage of the opportunity to steal anything they can and to victimize the weak and hungry. New Orleans has a notorously high crime rate and not a great police department. New Orlean's murder rate is among the highest in the country, roughly 5 times that of New York City. Property crimes in NOLA are twice as high as that in New York City, for example.

Not moving in the National Guard in anything like a timely fashion invited and almost guaranteed looting and chaos. I too am outraged by the chaos, but am less willing to blame the folks trapped in the Superdome or New Orleans Convention center.

Of course the conservatives on this board aren't interested in the unbelievable incompetence of the government but choose to worry about "primitivized man" or want to blame the poor and infirm for not evacuating in time like the less "primitive" middle class who loaded their minivans and got out of the way.

[Nono]

I've posted this before but will repeat it: Veteran BBC correspondent Charles Wheeler said the other day that the lawlessness has been exaggerated by authorities seeking excuses for their own inaction.