nbc Jeff Jacoby on the looters nbc
- From: "Joe" <obri6133@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 4 Sep 2005 09:09:21 -0700
An on-target article by Jeff Jacoby. Anyone familiar with the work of
Elijan Anderson, a sociologist at UofP, knows that he writes of two
kinds of people who inhabit the poorest areas of our cities, the decent
people and the street people. Viktor Frankl calls them the decent
people and the indecent people. I'd rather keep it simple and call them
the good and the bad. Realizng that a starving person will steal food,
it doesn't follow that crime and mayhem are caused by the hungry. I
don't consider those who stole food as being criminal. The overwhelming
majority of the people stranded in NO did NOT engage in criminal
activity in the aftermath of Katrina. Let's not insult them by making
excuses for those who did. Criminologists will have a field day
studying Katrina's aftermath, and when all the results are in, they'll
issue their findings in very technical sociological terms. The
translation will be simple though, the good and the bad did exactly
what they've always done.
JEFF JACOBY
The looting instinct
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | September 4, 2005
HURRICANE KATRINA was horrific in its devastation, but the orgy of
looting and lawlessness that exploded across New Orleans in its wake
was, in a way, even more sinister. A natural disaster can inflict
massive physical damage on a community. But when human beings become
savages, they shred the ligaments of civilization -- fairness, trust,
respect, consideration -- that make life as a community possible.
The viciousness began almost before the storm had passed. A Wal-Mart
was one of the first stores broken into; its inventory of guns promptly
disappeared. Crowds of thieves ransacked clothing stores, jewelry
stores, liquor stores. In full view of television crews and news
photographers -- and in some cases, even police or National Guardsmen
-- looters hauled cases of stolen beer through hip-deep water, filled
trash barrels with clothes, shoes, and jewelry, and crammed car trunks
with computers and DVD players. In a video clip shown on NBC, security
guards joined looters in stripping one shop bare. Police officers
looted, too.
To break into a drugstore protected by a steel barrier, reported The
New York Times, ''someone had stolen a forklift, driven it four blocks,
peeled up the security gate, and smashed through the front door."
Thieves entered the parking garage of a New Orleans hospital and
stripped cars of their batteries and stereos. Carjackers stole a
vehicle from a nursing home bus driver. Looters ransacked a police
truck filled with food.
But the breakdown of civil society didn't stop with attacks on
property. Soon the predators were attacking people.
On Thursday, New Orleans Police Chief Eddie Compass described the
savagery inside the convention center, where 15,000 people had taken
shelter: ''We have individuals who are getting raped; we have
individuals who are getting beaten." He sent 88 police officers to
restore order; they were beaten back by a mob. Police snipers took up
positions on precinct roofs, on guard against the armed gangs who were
roaming the city. Not all the corpses turning up in New Orleans were of
drowning victims. Some had been shot to death. The Federal Emergency
Management Agency was trying to operate, director Michael Brown said,
''under conditions of urban warfare."
Those who called early on for shooting looters on sight should have
been listened to -- not because property is more valuable than human
life, but because when property isn't safe from marauders, human life
isn't, either. When thugs find out they can get away with looting,
they're apt to conclude they can get away with anything.
As always, there were those whose first instinct was to make excuses
for the inexcusable.
''Had New York been closed off on 9/11, who can say what they would
have done?" said Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, vice president of the New
Orleans City Council. ''When there's no food, no water, no sanitation,
who can say what you'd do? People were trying to protect their
children." By smashing jewelry counters and stealing cases of beer? By
committing rape?
As New Orleans sank into anarchy, The Washington Post reminded its
readers to steer clear of moral judgments. ''What we think of as
looting," Linton Weeks wrote on the front page of the Post's Style
section, ''may be more complicated than it seems." And vandals making
off with DVDs or flat-screen TVs is ''complicated" because -- why,
exactly? Weeks didn't explain. He did, however, quote others who were
''trying to understand the nuances of looting." Professor Benigno
Aguirre of the University of Delaware: ''It may look from the outside
as if they are stealing or breaking the law, when in fact some of them
are trying to survive."
But most of us have no trouble distinguishing between desperate people
in need of food and water and brazen criminals descending to the level
of primitives. Just as most of us understand that morality and virtue
are never more essential than when disaster strikes.
If too many people behaved shamefully last week, countless others
responded to Katrina's horror with goodness and courage -- from the
heroism of those who braved the flood to rescue strangers to the
torrent of private relief, hundreds of millions of dollars' worth, now
pouring in from across the country.
In his classic ''Man's Search for Meaning," the great psychoanalyst
Viktor Frankl wrote: ''There are two races of men in this world . . .
the 'race' of the decent man and the 'race' of the indecent man." Each
of us chooses which ''race" to belong to. In New Orleans last week, the
decent and the indecent made their choice.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@xxxxxxxxxx
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: nbc Jeff Jacoby on the looters nbc
- From: ruth
- Re: nbc Jeff Jacoby on the looters nbc
- Prev by Date: SBC: Karaoke
- Next by Date: Re: nbc Jeff Jacoby on the looters nbc
- Previous by thread: SBC: Karaoke
- Next by thread: Re: nbc Jeff Jacoby on the looters nbc
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
