Katrina: Finding the Positive

Much has been made of the tragedy in the southern US over the past week and a half. The media have enjoyed immensely showing us scenes of people who were stranded on housetops and stuck in unhealthy shelters.

Sadly, what most of them missed was the good stuff that was happening to the large majority of one million people who were forced to evacuate their homes and leave their home states to bunk in with others, sometimes total strangers. Some, for example, are staying in Canadian universities.

However, that is not the point of this message. I want to make a point about how Katrina may change the direction that the world will take over the coming years.

September 11, 2001, made many Americans believe that everyone who was not a US citizen was potentially dangerous, a threat to "the American way of life," perhaps to their personal safety.

Since Katrina, over half the nations on Earth have contributed supplies and/or expertise to help the people of the US, generally considered to be the most hated nation on Earth. Put those two concepts together--hated nation and half the planet help its people.

Even Cuba, which has medical expertise far beyond its economic status, offered to send doctors to the US to help out. I have not heard whether or not the US accepted the offer--if it was to decline, I don't think I want to know.

Katrina was the worst natural disaster ever visited on North America, perhaps even on the western hemisphere. When the US showed itself to be its most helpless (and in many cases hopeless), most of the rest of the world--the ones who could afford to do something--pitched in to help.

The media and the politicians are not aware of this now, but the minds of Americans will change toward the rest of the world. After 9/11, "others" equalled "enemies." Since Katrina, "others" equal "strangers that could be friends."

It takes that magnitude of tragedy to change the thinking of a nation. But that tragedy might change the future of our world.

Al Qaida claimed that Allah had wreaked vengeance on the US for its misdeeds. Everyone else was prepared to come to the aid of the US in its hour of need.

Americans don't forget that kind of thing.

Within four years we have experienced two turning points in history. I dare say that no other people since our species began could make that claim.

Now we will watch to see if the neo-conservatives in the US continue to tear down the humanity of their nation, or if their others=enemy concept is buried and them aloing with it, or if there is a movement toward middle ground of socialists and conservatives.

It was the hands of men who brought about the turning point of history on 9/11. Was the natural disaster called Katrina just coincidence? Whether coincidence or not, Katrina arrived at a remarkably convenient time, when the world needed it most.

Feel free to send this message to anyone you like. However, if you send it to anyone else, please include the following attribution:
Bill Allin'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' searching for the common good in everyone.Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl