THe disconnect of the many on the right is amazing....

[Liberal Veteran]

I mean, I knew that the disconnect existed, but I've been round and round the internet and the one constant I hear is, "They were warned, why didn't they leave.". I even heard one person suggest they should have walked to safer location.

Sadly, they really don't understand or want to see the abject poverty that exists right under our very noses.

They cannot comprehend what it must be like to be an elderly poor person who can barely make it to the mailbox, much less the Superdome.

And yet they still say "Well, the people stayed made a choice to stay, why didn't they leave?"

They don't understand what it is to have little money, no resources to draw on, and no transportation. They see the America through their own eyes and cannot fathom the "other" America that lives right under their noses that they never see, because they don't rub elbows with them in day to day life. They avoid driving through their neighborhoods. They don't know what it's like to feel so powerless and without a place to turn that they just hunker down during a storm and pray their house make it through and they are alive at the end.

They enclose themselves in a little bubble where they have it so much better than they know, clamoring for tax cuts because they want to buy a new car for their kid, or take that trip to Hawaii next year.

I've sat here for days aghast at some (not all) on the right who seem to have no empathy, even when that part of society we would like to ignore is laid out before them.

And then comes the looting. Naturally, rather than focusing on the old lady trapped in her attic, they focus on the looting because it justifies their looking away and allows them to avoid the moral outrage they should feel at the situation that has burst around us.

"See?", they say. "And you want us to feel guilty about them?"

And my answer is yes. I do want you to feel sorry for them. People who have little or nothing and no resources were just left there while a catastrophe unfolded around them.

I want everyone on the right to look into that other America. It's an America that many are just a paycheck away from being a part of. And when it does come, do they expect their government to move with all the speed of molasses in the artic? Will they be happy with that?

They say you can judge a nation on how well it treats most poor and needy. And sadly, from where I stand, our government and many of its supporters have been found guilty.

[Gloria]

1. My freeper mother and the busses--I finally called her an android

today. I asked her what planet she was from.

[charlyvi]

2. They've been brainwashed for years that everyone

should bring themselves up by their own bootstraps. You know, personal responsibility. They've taken it to such an extreme that it has become callousness and unfeeling superiority. Repubs could not exist in their present state without feeling superior to another group of people. Their sense of brotherhood, which was preached by Christ, has evaporated. They are simple too superior minded to admit it.

[Broken_Hero]

3. Your post is exactly right on...

With 100% of my experience dealing with freepers, when talking about hurricane Katrina, or any other diaster where the poor are the main victims. It sickens me, brother, it truly does. I can't understant their way of thought, or thinking, and believe me i have spent countless hours trying to understand that "way" of thought, and i can't choke it down, at all. Good post, to bad, its freaking true....

[I_Make_Mistakes]

4. The sad thing is, they actually think they are really good, God-fearing

people. That great delusion will fall upon them, mentioned in the Bible, must be happening in our time.

[Career Prole]

8. They'd do well to fear God if they're believers.

Because God's going to have some hard questions for them when their time comes.
I hope for their sake God's in a forgiving frame of mind. Elsewise, they'll be off to an eternal Superdome of their own making.

[Garbo 2004]

5. It is an irony, a lot of those folks are a paycheck away from disaster

themselves as you say. And when something upsets their applecart they're often among the first to expect Big Daddy Guvmint to step in.

[asianmale]

6. Your post is right on, and

let us not forget the terrible State and City government that ignored the warnings and failed to protect their people. Certainly they knew the less fortunate masses were going to be slaughtered without government help BEFORE the storm came ashore. It is absolutely unforgivable that those helpless people weren't given transportation away, food, water and shelter before the storm hit. I am personally outraged to the core of my being by the shameless lack of action of the local officials. The icing is the lack of support by the Federal government AFTER the storm yet the root of the evil lies in the incompetent corrupt local government. How uncaring can you imagine a government to be?

[Old and In the Way]

7. They call us socialists.......they are anti-socialists.

They don't work/play well with others. They are loners who are alone with their ideas. Do that long enough and you get a warped perspective about things. Until they experience a disaster like NO, they'll happily let other whole segments of the country be destroyed to maintain their irrational belief system. They are the anti-Americans.