Katrina as Metaphor....

In post-apocalyptic world scenarios, Hollywood always depicts society as a series of nomadic groups who fight and kill one another in a dog-eat-dog world. I refused to believe that until recently. It wasn't the sight of people looting in New Orleans -- I live in Los Angeles, I understand how poverty and economic disenfranchisment can prime the pump for that sort of social upheaval -- I'm talking about the way Congress and the White House have failed to lead from the front on this issue and insure that every American city and town is preparing itself for catastrophe. Individuals guided by strong leadership are what keep our society running. The failure to set things right by this administration is the criminal act.

I'm not saying that people don't know how to act on their own. On the contrary, I believe that everything in our society conditions people to wait to be told what to do and it's the rare individual who will take matters into his or her own hands and actually help others through a catastrophic event. Much is made of the folks who were at Ground Zero in New York City 00 being attacked by a hostile enemy was a huge contributing factor in the response to the 9/11 attacks. Catastrophe on the other hand, fails to generate anger, it largely generates fear and fear must be dealt with through strong leadership.

I'm still hopeful. Foolishly, maybe, but I think events like this kill apathy, they don't breed it. Prosperity makes problems seem far away and the current combination of economic upheaval, the war in Iraq, the disaster that is BushCo domestic policy, the wiretaps, Port Security, immigration and who knows what else, create the conditions needed for folks to get up off their butts and do something.

From the AP:

The researchers analyzed data from Syracuse University's Maxwell Polls on Civic Engagement and Inequality, conducted in 2004 and shortly after Katrina. Ryo and Grusky divided respondents based on their answers to detailed questions on their attitudes toward poverty. They created four basic categories: "activists," "realists," "moralists," and "deniers."

Activists, defined as those who support state intervention to reduce poverty, went from 58 percent of respondents in the 2004 survey to 60 percent post-Katrina; and there were small gains for deniers, who believe poverty and inequality are "neither substantial nor growing" (from 21 percent to 25), and for moralists, who see poverty as a motivator, not a social problem (from near zero to 1 percent).

The most dramatic gain was among so-called realists, who don't believe in the state's ability to reduce poverty or inequality; their numbers nearly doubled to 11 percent.

Interpreting the findings, Grusky, a professor of sociology, says they show a majority of people already accepted that there was a problem and were doing something about it. The rest, he says, either see poverty as an individual problem or simply don't care.

"This idea that it's a dirty little secret, this poverty and inequality," he says, "just doesn't pass muster."

News coverage could partly explain the rise in denier and realist views. Some "did not take well to the liberal lesson that they no doubt regarded as foisted upon them," Grusky and Ryo wrote in their report, and so "the `call for action' story ... was countered by the equally powerful lesson that government intervention is all about inefficiency and ineptitude."