What Diogenes Said

I'm just going to take this wholesale from a comment below, because I wholeheartedly (and broken heartedly) agree with it:

I wanted to post the following from something I read at DailyKos. The question was, "why did BushCo fumble this so badly?"

The answer from one tcorse

"They deny that we are a community, asserting that we are only a group of competing individuals. They deny that we are hurt or helped by being a member of a community, and thus owe nothing and can expect nothing from that community. They will not invest in the future of the community, in the infrastructure that benefits us all, because to do so would be to admit that we are not all self-made men, and that their own personal wealth is not strictly their own doing. To acknowledge such would place upon them an ethical obligation to share their good fortune, and this they are loath to do. They can not grasp that it is cheaper to prepare for disaster than clean up after, for to do so would be to recognize their own limitations, and to ask them to sacrifice today for a better, shared future for the community they deny exists.

Their incompetence is ideological. We can not expect better. They will not learn from this. Our only hope is to oust them, else this disaster will be repeated - again, and again, and again."

So now we have people being sent to get aid from churches as the ultimate "you're on your own" to the survivors. Now, good people will step up as communities, but, ironically, it signals the death of national community, the fate of the idea of "the common good."

There is nothing but sorrow...
Diogenes