Citizens are Government's Only Real Strength

"Lord please grant our government officials the wisdom to see that it's citizens is it's only real strength."

Wow, those are some serious words. They came from a comment on the FEMA post. A lot of truth to that statement on a number of levels.

The plight in New Orleans was the focus, and the commenter was blasting the government for not accepting the assistance of the locals.

I just don't get that, from either direction. Who asks the government if they can help? And who refuses assistance? And who would take "no" for an answer? The whole concept is whacked.

Of course, I am from Alaska and we are bossy take-charge pioneering kind of people who have a long history of rescuing ourselves.

I was dying watching scenes of able bodied people sitting, waiting for help, instead of rolling up their sleeves and helping out themselves. I know there is shock involved, and dispair - but get over it. The time to take emotional inventory is AFTER the disaster not during it!

Different areas of the United States have different cultural heritages. The self-empowered New Yorkers got to the job, then squabbled for years over artisie-fartise issues in trying to find the appropriate "meaning" in replacement buildings.

California's laid-back attitude came to the front with "hey dude, after that mudslide came through and wiped everything off the foundation we now have a clean slate to build on...wanna go contemporary this time?"

Excuse my deaf ear to their complaints now that they are feeling the effects of their short-sided "environmental" policies. All fluff, no substance. Enjoy those droughts, energy shortages, and wildfires.

After record earthquakes, tidal waves, volcano blows, and avalanches (I'm just talking about my lifetime) Alaskans pick themselves up, dust themselves off, then risk their lives to make sure that their neighbors are safe and secure. We ask for forgiveness, not permission. The pix on this post and the FEMA post are not from New Orleans, they are from my hometown.

We are self-reliant, pro-active, and have long considered "government" officials to be our employees - got this little sense of entitlement going. Picked it up when we actually READ the constitution. Who takes the words of a bureaucrat as a final answer? You have a boat? You don't ask if it is okay, you get your ass out there and go house to house. When you run out of gas, start rowing.

Sit starving on the side of the road, waiting until someone tells you where to go? Duh, cars are driving by, follow them. Develop a recon party who figures it out and comes back to tell the rest. "Help me, help me!" Help yourself.

New Orleans, and I say this from first hand experience, has long been a city of decay and decline with a population that sleepwalks around in a state of learned-helplessness. The Big Easy.

No surprise to me that even when large groups gather in the same location for days on end with nothing to do they do not bother to be respectful of the dead or pro-active in assisting the living.

They can't be bothered to pick up their trash and deposit it in a can on a good day, you expect them to change their ways for a natural disaster?

Adversity reveals character, it doesn't create it. The government of New Orleans is made up of people from New Orleans, and there is a price to be paid for corruption, illiteracy, and not having enough common sense to see a train wreck heading your way and getting off the tracks.

If any city in Alaska had a day's notice that adversity was coming its way it would be a ghost town. Granted, New Orleans has a much larger population, but it also has more resources.

Wisdom, common sense, Darwinism. The smarter folks got out of harms way, and with an amazing infusion of federal funds they will re-build New Orleans. I feel for those who were truly helpless - children, the infirmed, animals - the collateral damage of other's stupidity.