Of Pens and Swords

It’s all down hill from here really. We’re packing stuff up, cleaning equipment, turning in excess crap…usually means we’re striking camp relatively soon. Either that or we’ll be deficient equipment for the next year we’re here…

Other news…I almost had my first fight with Jessica. I said something that I knew was a little inflammatory to her in an email. I didn’t do it intentionally, but I knew it was probably a bad time to bring it up right after I hit the send button. That might sound like a bad thing, and as a singularity, it is. I’ve never had a fight with Jess though, we’ve not even gotten really close to it but one other time. The difference of men and women that one was almost about, and the lack of comparison between photo and real…long story that probably every man has to go through before. Anyways, even though we almost got into a fight, and hell, may still eventually, I think it’s a significant thing. Are we finally getting comfortable with each other after over a year to move into this phase? Probably, though as a whole, I think it’s a very insignificant thing, this level of comfort. We’ve always been, or at least I’ve always been pretty comfortable with her. A few times I wasn’t, early on, and I don’t think that’ll be an issue anymore so there isn’t any real reason to go on about it.

I’m babbling, ain’t I?

I’m getting a little worried about getting back into civilian life. I didn’t have all that much experience to begin with. It helps that a lot of people I work with are prior service, mostly officers, and there is a clear chain of command structure (even though I’m a contractor, I’m comparable to a cross-component liaison, still working for the team, just bringing in different assets) so that makes life easier to deal with. I did have a first job, one boss, 40 of us that knew as much or more than the boss, to deal with. It was my glimpse into civilian life ( a 1.5 year glimpse) and how people in general have a talent for complaining about immovable objects and blaming their failures on others. It gave me an insight on how timid people really are in a lot of cases, and how easily they’re stressed out (after watching multiple times someone about having a breakdown due to traffic of all things). Ahh, people…I bet aliens think they taste good. And tigers. Sharks. Bears. Crunchy and cream filled is what they say.

I was in a conversation with a buddy of mine yesterday at lunch (or dinner, one of those chicken meals) and we were talking about the loss of New Orleans. I don’t get to see any tv, he has one in his office. He was talking about how people are getting mad about the lack of non-support, and even going as far as making this into a race issue. This pissed me off. To start off with, until he brought it up, I never thought of New Orleans as a primarily black city. I knew it was, I’ve been there 10 times in my life. I just never thought of it that way. It’s a Black City…I think of Welston, part of STL, as a black city…because white folk aren’t allowed in, and will get shot or beat down by entering. At least it was like that 10 years ago. If a white guy isn’t allowed to drive through, then it’s a black city…New Orleans, however, is just a city. The issue of race being brought up, especially by their leadership and inflammatory news casters, is just a bad thing. Here, FEMA and other agencies are trying to mobilize enough resources nation-wide to get people the help.
Now, lets think about this for just a second…When do you think any government agency ever plans for a loss of a major city? Probably during something cataclysmic. Something like that is probably expected to have a high casualty rate (man-pad nuke, large scale bio/chem attack), so they plan on handling the survivors. But I seriously doubt this plan is rehearsed more than once every few years. I also doubt that they envisioned losing 3/4 of a city in a single day, and it probably wasn’t due to a storm surge breaking levee’s. Who also expects any agency to have stockpiled food, water, and transportation on hand, to support a large city? If that would be expected, we’d have to create new towns just to house all the resources, and they’d have to be placed strategically all over the country. Talk about waste.
People are bitching because the food they receive are MRE’s. If you don’t like them, then go to the store and buy your own food. Oh, wait, you can’t because ITS UNDER-FUCKING-WATER!
But it must be because it’s a race thing that we’re not shipping down the finest of cuisines.

My point that eventually I’ll get to is this. First, I believe that the past 10-15 years of political correctness, not being able to hurt anybody elses feeling, the uber feminist-hippy outlook on life, is showing it’s true form now. Instead of fostering a notion that people are still ultimately responsible for their own life and their own well-being, there are hundreds of thousands of people, or at least their loudmouthed leadership representing them, thinking that it’s everyone else’s responsibility to help them. They leave dead bodies laying bloated on street corners, why? Because it’s our fault for not helping them, not theirs. We’re fostering a nation of blamers, people unwilling or now seemingly unable to take responsibility. It’s not their fault the city walls failed and the city was lost….it’s not ours either. Deal with it, and start the recovery. Don’t hide in a building, wait for a reporter to come by, beg for water, then right afterwards tell them they have to move the body in front of where you’re hiding, stating that it’s been there for 5 days. Why didn’t you move it? Take the body somewhere so they can be properly identified and disposed of. Ahh, it’s not your responsibility, because you only live there, but you don’t know who used to occupy that body.
It’s a race issue because the news captures black men looting a store. They say if a White man went in and got food, it would be called survival. It would be too if the black man wasn’t carrying a 52″ plasma screen tv…I know, I know, they taste good with caviar and salted salmon..
Howabout this…In a city where a majority of people in it are black, how, pray tell, do you get pictures of a minority group of white guys looting stores? Let the news people know where to find these roving hordes and I’m sure they’ll go out and paint them as well.

Here’s a plan. It’s so crazy it might even work. Let us pull every soldier out of the middle east. Out of the Balkans, out of every other place in the world, and have them stay home. They’ll be the ones responsible. If you have an overcrowding of dead bodies, we’ll come and remove them. If your city has been destroyed, we’ll come in and replace it. We’ll fix your broken systems and provide fresh food and water.
Then, since we did all that work, we’ll guard it against you. Since we know we can’t trust you to take care of yourselves, we also won’t be able to trust you with what we built. We’ll issue you all the food you need to survive, give you a Brita so you can drink water. Oh, wait, that constitutes you doing something for yourself. We’ll bottle the water for you. We’ll come in and babysit you from yourselves.

Endstate of rambling…A few good things have come out of this, and a lot more can, if people affect change. The good things are: Government agencies have a clearer understanding, or will, of how to handle this sort of natural disaster on our own soil. They’ve been doing it for years on other peoples soil, just not ours. The French Quarter hasn’t been lost, and will be restored for the most part. That is a good thing, I’d love to go back someday. People who survive this are going to have a new base of pain to determine their fault tolerances. They’ll be stronger because of it, hopefully.
A few good things that are potentially there are: People could figure out how to add more to their own relief than they are. They could also see that because in a primarily black town, black people are the ones caught on camera or reported on that loot and shoot at the rescue birds coming in. Maybe the community as a whole will see this as an embarrassment, and work to effect a large scale change. Maybe they’ll see that in a lot of cases it’s not the white man keeping you down but your selves.

I’d say that won’t happen. It’s easier to blame others.

Blame God. He hates us all equally…