Even in the face of tragedy, there are some people in this world that you cannot really feel sorry for. I realize that we now live in a world that is dominated by a 24 hour news cycle that makes its bread and butter out of sensationalism. How do you ask, does an entity create two very different things like bread and butter out of the same basic materials? Don't know. Either way, if you watch CNN as much as I do (and it is truly an embarrassing amount) then you come to realize that the same basic stories are broadcast and rebroadcast all day. Sometimes, a particular story will take up more than what seems like 75% of the broadcast time. My point is this: in the face of all of recent tragedies...such as Hurricanes very large, and super very large...some people just blew it. Admit it, they really did. I am not talking about the officials of the state, though that is another issue entirely. I'm talking about the people of the South who simply would not leave because of a.)their insane desire to keep their property in the face of forfeiting life and/or b.)because they "didn't expect it to be this bad". The first argument I can somewhat understand, though only because I can let these people off of the hook for being Southern, and being from a part of the country that is still enormously steeped in racial tension. But the second argument I cannot buy. I know that they have satellite TV in the bayou. These people are NASCAR fans, some of the most fervent on Earth, and I dint believe that they dint put on their Dale Earnhardt jacket and watch the races with a cold Bud. My question is this: how did you NOT know it was going to be that bad? How blind to reality and consequence and logic do you have to be. Nearly every television station ran the commentary that first Katrina, then Rita, were the largest hurricanes ever on record. On record. That means "since someone decided to start keeping track". If you had ever had a problem in hurricanes past, all of which we now know were smaller than K and R, you would then predict that your problems would increase as the size of the hurricanes increases. Hmmm, simply logic yes?
Another case in point: three people were killed by an exploded grenade in Bosnia. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051107/od_nm/bosnia_grenade_dc
In essence three 19-21 year olds were killed when a grenade with which they were playing catch exploded. The grenade was apparently an unexploded bit of ordinance. Again, tragic. I think: "Oh how terrible, we live in a world so torn apart by conflict that the shadows of the conflict years later can still physically harm those left alive". Then I realize: "What the hell were they doing playing with a grenade?". So really, the story goes something like this...
It is 2 am and after leaving a bar, three drunk boys, in a country that probably has compulsory military service by age 18*, pick up the ordinance and begin to screw around, in what my comrade Jerry refers to as appropriate Balkan fashion. What i find most amazing about this article is that it states that "the cause of the detonation was unknown". Well, i bet it had just a little to do with the boys tossing it drunkenly around...just a hunch.
Regardless, i see ignorance replacing accountability. Somewhere along the line "i didn't know" became an acceptable excuse for not taking care of oneself. Well, not only did you know, but you were told WEEKS before.
So in the end, i dint feel sorry for any of these people, regardless of how "tragic" their circumstances may be.
