Tuesday, September 13, 2005

The New Atlantis!

OK, I’m going to break the rules of Political Correctness and dare to ask… has anyone noticed the difference in the way Mississippi is “handling” the destruction of their state and the way Louisiana is “handling” theirs?

Lord help me, I can hear the “hate mail” now!

It has been troubling me that I haven’t heard any comparisons by the MSM about this obvious difference in the way the two states met this emergency and took immediate action, or not. It is also fascinating how the Mississippians seem to have immediately grabbed the bull by the horns, not waiting for the Federal Government, and began the clean-up and restoration of their state and their homes.

What do you suppose this demonstrates?

There are two different kinds of mentality; it seems to me, at work in these two states. One is the old “plantation mentality” and the other is the “We’ll take care of business ourselves” mentality. I’ll leave it to you to decide which state has which mentality.

Now, the thing REALLY troubling me is… I’m convinced they will rebuild that “underwater city” right where it is. They will rebuild it with our money… yours and mine. I mean we know, for a scientific fact, that the ground, upon which the city currently resides, is sinking (as in ATLANTIS sinking!). Why in the world would any right thinking person rebuild in a known sinkhole? What kind of reasoning is that? Then, what has reason got to do with it!

You see, if reason was implemented, that city, what’s left of it, would be left to the fishes, cottonmouth moccasins, and ‘gaters. The “new city” of New Orleans would be built on high, dry, ground, ground, which after much testing, is proven to be stable and not sinking! See? The Mississippi River would be allowed to follow its natural course and not an artificial one. In a hundred years, or so, glass bottom boats could be rented out to tourists to view “The Sunken City of New Orleans” beneath the ocean waves of the Gulf.

I’m only half-joking about this. Rebuilding that city in that disaster area is, well, a disaster waiting to happen… again!

The other problem, is how the heck are they going to get those folks, moved to other parts of the US, to come back? Many are seeing, for the first time in their lives, the way the other half lives… and they like it! They’ll have to drag many of them, kicking and screaming, back to New Orleans after this!

I was sort of hoping France could be convinced to take it back! But, I was disabused of that idea by a friend of mine who retorted, “now that we have bought it, we have to keep it”!

“Longstreet”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Actually, Mississippi has had a lot of the same problems Lousianna had. It's just that Mississippi didn't have the flooding New Orleans got.

But there is a massive lack of housing in Mississippi -- Sen Trent Lott was blasting FEMA the first week because FEMA wouldn't release 20,000 trailers they had in Atlanta to Mississippi.

MEMA and FEMA were fighting with one another and had many of the same communication problems as New Orleans saw.

Early recovery efforts in Mississippi were devoted to protecting and recovering casino boats (there's a great story on Drudge today about near slave labor and prison like conditions for "relief" workers tricked into cleaning up casinos).

And many of the casino boats where hurled into houses and businesses on shore.

Part of the problem is that property is being valued over human life by the government at all levels.

New Orleans was a center of massive human misery with 40,000 people trapped by flood waters in two storm shelters and the government refusing to help them after the flood.