Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events

This was reply to something on flame, but rightly belongs here
DL — (archived)

one capable of discharging its duty to its citizens regardless of the class of that citizen. One that does not claim with a straight face that they are not ultimately responsible for protecting the safety and life of its own citizens.

The notion that we can/should not hold federal, state and local officials responsible for horrble preparedness, horrible information processing, horrible planning, horrible coordination and horrible response is beyond comprehension. Governments do not exist for partisans to have ideological squabbles over about blame/innocense. The primary duty of Legal and Legitimate Government is to protect their people from all threats.

While I am perfectly fine holding NO/LA authorities responsible in part, regardless of party affiliation, it is absolutely inconcievable to me that partisans here and elsewhere find no problem with the DHS chief announcing that he only knew about the levees bursting twenty four hours after the first catastrophic failure. Or maybe even more insane: finding no problem with the FEMA chief announcing 48 hours after the flooding, and a day after the initiation of significant media coverage, that he ony 'just' found out about the refugees at the convention center. Or how about defending a president heartily congratulating the efforts of a man he would fire less than 2 days later. Or maybe defending him claiming to be impressed with the efforts he would re-organize in 2 days. Or defending a president who actually states that 'nobody thought the levees would fail', when it has been gospell at FEMA and in Academia that the levee system would fail on a cat 3 storm.... This has been well understood since the 1960s. If 'nobody' in the administration knew this, this is a simple and blatant failure to find the facts relevant to their job.

It is irresponsible for citizens of a democracy to not hold authority accountable when authority fails in the discharge of its most fundamental, basic and incontravertable duty: the protection of the civic populace.

Just as with iraqi WMD and Terrorist ties, we are landing in this bizarre nihalism, where nobody (except, somehow, Clinton) is to blame for obvious definable mistakes.

if the partisans here have their way, we land at this absurd conclusion: We elect a government to do nothing to protect us. We elect a govenrment to act, not with basis in fact, but to do whatever they so desire regardless of the details of reality. When those actions fail the people, they have no liability to explain themselves or improve. We end up with this sort of bizarre hyper-real media-organization-as-government whose main role is infotainment and selling a belief structure. Who can lay the blame for failure at the feet of LOCAL government and the people themselves, but not at their own feet.

This is absurd. I assure you, I did not go to the polls to get this form of government, and if you did- mores the pity for you.

Legitimate Government exists to serve the needs of the people. When they fail, they fail. No Excuses.

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