I'm still here

First of all, waking up in the morning sucks ass. I haven't had to wake up before 8:00 since the last week of July. Now its back to 5:15 wake-ups again.

Second, I still think that the heat sucks, but it is getting better.

Finally, I want to say something about this whole hurricane thing. Did it suck? I would say yes based on what I have seen on TV? Do I want to help? Sure, but I'm not going to lie. I'm not really going to do anything but feel bad and pray. Do I think that its fucked up to loot and shoot helicopters? You better believe it. They should all get buckwheats. (If you don't know what a buckwheat is, you either don't want to know or should watch "Things to do in Denver When You're Dead" and find out). I want to take a little more philosophical look at the situation.

Thomas Hobbes wrote in The Leviathan that when man existed in nature without laws life would be "nasty, brutish, and short." He felt that man must live under laws in order to preserve civilized society. I never really wanted to believe this. My feeling has always been that although I think Hobbes was essentially correct, that man naturally has a tendency towards law and order. Although we all want to protect our own well-being, it rarely comes at the direct expense of the well-being of others. Sure, when the rich get richer, the poor inevitably get poorer, but I'm looking at a grander scale.

Watching the "bad people" of New Orleans doing what they have done makes me wonder if Hobbes was more correct than I originally thought. This hurricane has made the rich and poor of that area more equal. Granted, most of the upper class probably have enough liquid assets and insurance to rebuild, so they will be OK, but what about the middle class. They are white-collar, business-owners, professionals, etc. that had nice homes and TVs and nice cars, but those are all gone. They will soon find out that their insurance was not as good as they thought and realize that they are pretty much screwed. Many of these people will be immediately thrust into a lower economic class. So will this turn them to rioting and looting? I don't think so. So what brings the people that are left to act the way they have? If I were in the same situation, I would have no problem breaking into a Wal-Mart for some water and food, maybe a tent. What makes someone decide that they need to make a plasma TV and a shotgun their priority? Is it because they now exist in Hobbes's nature outside the law? Why isn't everybody doing this? Were these same people criminals before the hurricane? I guess I even understand the guy that takes the TV - he may never have the ability to get it legally, but what makes somebody shoot at doctors and patients trying to evacuate the hospital? I've thought about it all day and I just can't think of a reason.

So maybe once you have lived in a "civilized society" and used opportunities to be successful you lose that part of you that is nasty and brutish. Maybe those who have been left behind in this land of opportunity are still "living in nature" as we continue to ignore them. I'm not trying to justify what these people are doing, but this same scenario did not happen with Hurricane Andrew, which hit a much more affluent area. The government had a lot of warning about this storm. These same busses that are now taking people to Houston could have done the same thing before the storm. Some chose to stay, some had to stay, but others had no way to get out, and now we are left to deal with it. Today Bush went to Congress to ask for $10 billion to aid recovery. There are currently 2400 National Guardsmen in New Orleans and there are more going every day. We have spent 20 times this amount in Iraq and have sent 100x more troops. Where are our priorities? Those who really were innocent victims of this tragic event deserve to have at least the same, if not better, protection than people living in another country are getting from our own troops.

I believe that is more than enough to qualify as a rant, so I will leave it at that.