Isaac Whatever

As much as I hate Bush, if he's somehow responsible for this disaster, so are all of us.

Do people depend on you? Do you have a disaster plan for them? If you think you could react perfectly to any situation on the spur of the moment, you are wrong. Keeping a cool head and acting without hesitation won't suddenly give you a supply of fresh water.

If being unprepared for some random catastrophe makes you responsible for the damage done by that event, then we are responsible for everything around us. What, you saw a diabetic having a blood sugar crash and you didn't give him insulin? You didn't have any insulin on you? You loser, you know about diabetes, it's your fault. What, that guy fell from the roof and you didn't have a mattress for him to fall on? Why not? There's a mattress place only a few blocks away, and you could afford a mattress. You screwed up! You're responsible for that guy going splat.

Anyway, it just doesn't work. Everyone in government might have made mistakes, but I'm not sure we can assign blame.

I still hate Bush though.

There were two incidents in the katrina tragedy that I want to investigate.

A couple left the nursing home they operated without evacuating their patients. The patients, presumeably, died slowly and horribly. They couldn't be evacuated without dying, so even though it looked grim, staying where they were was their best chance at survival.

A number of hospital employees, faced with dying patients and failing equipment, gave the hopeless cases an overdose of morphine. Then, when possible, they stayed with the patients until they died.

These cases are interesting because they are so similar at face value, and so different in the reactions they bring out. In both cases, the equipment required to keep the patients alive failed. Patients couldn't be evacuated, and people were going to die.

In the nursing home, it seems that the couple abandoned the patients, and let them die horribly. In the hospital, people feel that the staff stayed with the patients, easing their deaths.

However, in the hospital, the staff assured the death of the patients. They made it a certainty. In the nursing home, the staff gave the patients the best chance for survival that they could.

So why then, do we feel so strongly that the couple in the nursing home are guilty of abandonment, and that the hospital staff are heroes for staying with their patients?

We're assuming here that the nursing home people weren't stupid idiots, and the hospital staff did their jobs to the best of their ability. This is probably incorrect, but who knows.

I'm a security guard at the hospital now. It sucks hard. The pay is crap. It is mostly total boredom.

Woo. They might not pay me much, but "a little bit is better than nada".

Someone else hire me, please.

It was a valiant struggle. He lay in wait on my pillow, hoping to catch me as I went to sleep. However, he was overzealous, and showed himself too early. I attacked and the spider retreated across the wall. I then grabbed a juggling club and picked him off from across the room.

I have a huge dent in my wall now, but at least I don't have a huge spider on my pillow.