Options and Priorities

America is the land of opportunity, but opportunity is the privilege of those who have options. Take the hurricane; the people who left New Orleans when the getting was good were all of those who had options. They had a place to go or they had someone to stay with. Opportunity also makes itself available to those who can set priorities. For those who could leave the Coast, survival was their priority.

Those who stayed behind mostly had limited options. And while survival may have been a priority to them, it seems that we did not share that same sense of urgency. Anyone who saw those images should have known that the situation was dire, but that did not translate into immediate action.

Thus, in a way the classic American struggle between the haves and the have nots really can be boiled down to those two principles.

Options:
I have this preference for a certain brand of bottled water, and ever since it started to disappear from the shelves at Giant Food, I've now been on this crusade to find it at any and every grocery store possible. Today I bought four bottles of it, and tonight I learned that it is only available at the Safeway or at Whole Foods. This means that I have to make a special effort to have this water on hand when I want it (usually for dance class or for riding my bike).

Why not drink regular water? Because regular tap water in DC tastes aweful and bottled water is portable. It is better for me than soda, so my new thing is to keep bottled water all over the house, in the car, and wherever I am.

So, back to my point about options...designer water for certain activities and regular bottled water for everything else. I never even have to consider tap water.

Priorities:
People have been on the radio and TV talking about the animals that were left behind in the storm. One charity is raising money for the purpose of housing these strays. I think this borders on the insane.

Not to be cold, but if someone leaves behind a pet in a situation like this, it may seem tragic, but we have more important things to worry about. What about the million PEOPLE who were displaced by the storm? There are Americans who became homeless overnight and we are worried about where Fluffy and Spot are going to sleep tonight?

So, it takes three days to get to the people trapped in the Superdome, so some of them actually died in the middle of the street, but somehow the Humane Society can get TV time to plead for money to save stray pets? And we aren't even talking about livestock.

Responsibility:
Finally, who gets the blame for all of this? Surely we can't shake our fingers or raise our voices at God. God is generally above blame. Acts of God are uninsurable events in which no one even claims liablity.

So the next person to blame should be those elected officials whom we charge with taking care of us--the President, the governors, and the local mayors. But these people have scapegoats who will take the blame for them. So I say that we blame Saddam Hussein. We blame him for everything else that's wrong. After all, if he hadn't invaded Kuwait back in 1991, then we would never have gone to war there, which would never have pissed off the Taliban, who never would have taken over Afganistan, which never would have encouraged Osama, who never would have carried out terrorist attacks, which never would have resulted in 9-11, which never would have caused us to go to war. If we accept that logic, then we're on the right track for making the world a better place.