The "reason" behind injustice

I hesitated to comment on the following in my blog, lest it take on any more life than it already has. But as I looked across the vast expanse of the internet, I found no one who had even uttered a peep against this nonsense. So here goes.

The nonsense (which I've seen online varyingly labeled as truth and humor, and as originating either from North Dakota or Colorado, but which came to me in the following form):

Denver Post:

This text is from a county emergency manager out in the central part of Colorado after todays snowstorm.

WEATHER BULLETIN
Up here, in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from a Historic event--- may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" --- with a historic blizzard of up to 44" inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.

FYI:
George Bush did not come.
FEMA did nothing.
No one howled for the government.
No one blamed the government.
No one even uttered an expletive on TV .
Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.
Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.
Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.
CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX or NBC did not visit - or report on this category 5 snowstorm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.
No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.
No one looted.
Nobody - I mean Nobody demanded the government do something.
Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.
No Larry King, No Bill O'Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No Geraldo Rivera.
No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.

Nope, we just melted the snow for water.
Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.
The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a penny.
Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snowbound families.
Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.
We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.
We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is "Work or Die".
We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks.
Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.

"In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate."
It does seem that way, at least to me.

I hope this gets passed on.
Maybe SOME people will get the message. The world does Not owe you a living.

I am delighted to hear, of course, that the real or fictional people in this account banded together, helped others and were able to head out to work. I am glad that they had restaurants to serve them food and fires to keep them warm. I am also glad that their snow did not have dead bodies or sewage in it so that it could be safely used for drinking water. For the many real people in Colorado who were stranded by or suffered damage in the recent storms (including my roommate and her family), I am glad that many were able to return soon and safely to their homes.

To compare these storms with what happened in New Orleans and other areas of the Gulf Coast is a travesty. That storm severely affected millions of people in 5 coastal states, not to mention minor effects inland. More than 1800 people died, hundreds remain categorized as missing, and more than $80 billion dollars of damage resulted. The declared disaster area was nearly the size of the United Kingdom.

Restaurants were not open, and local emergency services struggled to operate. Cars could not travel in many parts of the region, but numerous volunteers did use their boats without compensation to rescue others who were stranded. Families in various parts of the affected states did take in family members, friends and strangers if they had habitable dwellings. But none of these do-it-yourself gestures, no matter how valuable they were and continue to be, is sufficient to handle a disaster of this magnitude.

Yet it wasn't even this comparison that incensed me, stupid as it is. It was these lines:

• We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks.
• "In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate."

It's barely disguised code for "poor, dark people are the cause of all the world's problems," with a nice undertone of "let's cut 'em loose."

I'm not even sure where to begin to untangle the web of prejudice behind these remarks. Do you start by pointing out the obvious fact that poverty, not to mention a variety of other "social ills" exist in the North American, Northern European and Asian countries that fall in this person's special latitudes? Do you talk about the social systems that many Northern European countries have and pay dearly for in order to provide basic services and education for every one of their citizens? Do you talk about the long history of oppression and exploitation of darker people by lighter people and the legacy that has been left in African, Asian and South American countries as a result? Do you talk about the tremendous imbalance in access to resources and opportunity between haves and have nots in this country, not to mention this country and the whole rest of the world, and the ever-increasing gap between the two groups? Should I maybe just give this person Jared Diamond's excellent book, Collapse, and hope that his eloquence will wake up for my apoplectic inarticulateness?

I feel impotent, and frustrated. Especially since there are these small seeds of good questions or thoughts that this person takes and twists into lies and evil. I do think we need to continuing examining the welfare system and other anti-poverty strategies to understand the balance between providing for those in need and encouraging people to do as much as they are able for both themselves and others. I don't know how I feel about recurring funding for people to live in and recover from known disaster areas (and also, typically, ecologically fragile ones) - whether in the Gulf Coast or the forests of California or the shores of Massachusetts. I do condemn the looting and violence and anger that was shown in much of the media, although I also a) understand what caused it and b) know that wasn't the whole story, but merely the most sensational one.

I wanted to write something really eloquent in response to this, but I can't. I just don't know how to reach across that divide and touch all the people out there who forwarded this on and cheered it. I don't know how to explain that we can't abandon portions of our society just because they look or act different; I don't know how to explain the costs of that to people who don't recognize the value of other people in the first place. But I hope if there are any Christians out there, they will remember this - we are all one body, and we don't function properly without each other.