Tuesday, August 30, 2005

I got rights to other people's stuff, I've been oppressed

Man, I am totally appalled.

Maybe I shouldn't be so harsh. What the people of New Orleans and Gulfport and Biloxi is beyond my realm of experience. I mean, I've survived a tornado, but that didn't take out an entire city, leaving virtually nothing.

And our flawed, broken nature leads usto do bad things, like taking advantage of a crisis to do some looting.

But what I read in the story linked above saddened and appalled me. Read:

NEW ORLEANS - With much of the city flooded by Hurricane Katrina, looters floated garbage cans filled with clothing and jewelry down the street in a dash to grab what they could.

In some cases, looting on Tuesday took place in full view of police and National Guard troops.

At a Walgreen’s drug store in the French Quarter, people were running out with grocery baskets and coolers full of soft drinks, chips and diapers.

When police finally showed up, a young boy stood in the door screaming, “86! 86!” — the radio code for police — and the crowd scattered.

Denise Bollinger, a tourist from Philadelphia, stood outside and snapped pictures in amazement.

“It’s downtown Baghdad,” the housewife said. “It’s insane. I’ve wanted to come here for 10 years. I thought this was a sophisticated city. I guess not.”


And more:

Around the corner on Canal Street, the main thoroughfare in the central business district, people sloshed headlong through hip-deep water as looters ripped open the steel gates on the front of several clothing and jewelry stores.

One man, who had about 10 pairs of jeans draped over his left arm, was asked if he was salvaging things from his store.


“No,” the man shouted, “that’s everybody’s store.”


Here's the worst part:

Mike Franklin stood on the trolley tracks and watched the spectacle unfold.

“To be honest with you, people who are oppressed all their lives, man, it’s an opportunity to get back at society,” he said.

It's this last quote that gets me. See what he's saying? If you've been "oppressed," then you have some sort of blank check to get back at "the Man" (even if the Man's store you're looting is owned by someone who is far from wealthy and is just as likely to be living month-to-month, too).

I blame people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, and the various socialists for this kind of attitude. These types have making a great living feeding people with the notion that they are "oppressed" and laying the ground work for these kinds of beliefs of "the entitlement of the oppressed" to take root.

If you've been told every day that you're oppressed and your misfortune is all the fault of someone else, society, of course it's going to lead to such acts of "getting back at society."

No comments: