Ok, so Chile had a big earthquake. But the death toll wasn’t nearly as high as Haiti? Why? I think it’s because Chile is a 2nd or 1st World country.
Well NPR has a reporter on the ground in Concepcion Chile. There were reports of widespread food looting, but then they said “well… not really” and never explained what that meant, totally. Was there looting or wasn’t there? Was it only 3 people stealing food? Or was it thousands but they were all throwing wads of cash into a buck and leaving said bucket of cash outside the managers office? Or what?
Anyway, this poor reporter on the scene has really drunk the Kool Aid. First she seemed kinda shocked that curfew in the city proper applied to journalists like her. To THINK! It must be really bad if they didn’t let her special butt out to see. And she kept repeating in her report about the absence of gov’t forces and how HORRID that was. She described how order was pretty much maintained even without cops to tell people what to do, and folks were forming their own bucket brigades for transportation of fresh water where it was needed. In other words, without gov’t forces present everything was going fine, considering a huge earthquake had done a lot of property damage and killed hundreds. And she seemed gobsmacked. That things were horribly wrong because there wasn’t government types around to solve the peoples problems.
Lady! The absence of The Man, when there is no loss of law and order and decency, is a feature, not a bug.
You WANT gummint men with guns to tell you what to do when things go bad? You NEED that? And by the report it sounded like people were obeying the requested curfew without being forced to by men with guns, and people were going out during the day to do bucket brigades for water, and the reports of looting were unconfirmed from what the reporter could hear.
Sound to me Chile and Chile's people are working exactly how they are supposed to, considering the bad circumstances of a natural disaster. Good on them. Shame on NPR journo.
Of course the NPR journo might not have been properly reporting civic unrest, murder and mayhem. Or agitation was occurring beneath the surface and a paralyzed deaf and blind man could tell it was coming. If there was such riotous behavior, then yes, law and order might need to be restored and gov't representatives might, in many cases, be good for that. She wasn't reporting that. She was reporting quiet, and she was reporting absence of saviors coming down from on high from their homes in Official Bureacratic Buildings to be seen, 'helping'. As I said, both of those 2 conditions are good things.
When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like nails. If your entire worldview revolves around the government being the only answer to problems, it must look weird for normal people doing for themselves in a crisis.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about any of the rest of it... I just want to make sure that when you're typing this, you're pronouncing it Chee-lay in your head and not Chill-lee, like what you eat.
ReplyDeleteThat's how you tell a good educated journalist from one of the unwashed masses, you know. :)
and Pock ehs STAHN
ReplyDeleteNPR is either stellar or downright amateurish. Rarely is it in between.
ReplyDeleteToo often it is both amateurish and irresponsibly inaccurate when reporting on hot button topics such as gun control.
As a NPR/PBS supporter I'm often embarrassed by them when they report on anything/everything related to firearms, the military, or hunting.