Human Nature at Its Finest

I don't really know at all where I want to go with this, but I would say it could easily be controversial and it's a conversation largely concerning demographics.

With the floods in Iowa, I think it's been largely noticed at the whole "neighborly" attitude that primarily exists in the Midwest. More than one night over the last few weeks, I have found myself almost in tears at the idea of losing everything and still helping out the community. I love this very thing about the Midwest - not just that when you smile at someone they will cheerfully smile back (and mean it!) - but it always seems that when disaster strikes, we're sending in the National Guard for more help - not to patrol.

With that in mind, I recently was looking at photos of people wading in waist-high water, and wondering why people couldn't have had a similar attitude during Hurricane Katrina. And you know what? I couldn't come up with a logical answer. Following Hurricane Katrina, people from all over the country gave money and time to help clean up - but what seemed overwhelmingly true was that those actually affected by the hurricane waited around for others to take care of their mess. Violence erupted, and looting ensued. Why? There's no good reason. People came up with the answer that this is what happens after a natural disaster. No, it's not!

I know that lots of people can call me a bigot or racist or something of that nature because many people are going to make the connection that lots do with Hurricane Katrina - that it involved lots of poor people who happened to be non-white. I'm not going there, at all. I'm simply trying to point out that how is it we excused all the violence that occurred in the aftermath? Tons of natural disasters (maybe not of the same scale, obviously) happen every year, and nothing results the way Hurricane Katrina did.

I don't want to explain it. I can't. I do want to recognize the amazing people out there, though, that will take a day off work to fill up sandbags. Something that really seems to really only come from the Midwest...