Monday, October 24, 2005

Looting. Why wait for a disaster?

I just saw this and I had to wonder "when did it become OK to loot?" When Katrina hit New Orleans the widespread looting that followed was certainly a national embarrassment. Watching this activity being perpetrated by my countrymen was humiliating. All I could envision is the reporting of this in the international press and having our status as the world's economic superpower be once again belittled.
Have the Mexican people in Cancun learned this behavior from us? Is this a case of learned behavior through the broadcast media? Is it really accepted behavior now?
Here on the South Shore of Boston, we recently had a lot of torrential rain storms and flooding has caused serious problems throughout the New England states. In Taunton, Massachusetts, there was an old wooden dam built about 150 years ago which was holding back water which, if it ever failed, would have flooded the downtown area with at least 6 feet of water. When the wooden supports started to buckle recently and the news media reported an evacuation of the downtown section, the local joke among neighbors and friends was as follows:
Why wait for the flooding to actually happen? Loot before it floods! That way, the groceries, televisions and sundries will be in pristine condition and not water-soaked like they appeared to be in New Orleans and Cancun.
I hope it remains just a joke.

2 comments:

Vman said...

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