Yeah

New Orleans, wow. It's been what, four days? How the hell can things fall so completely apart (so much for Yeats-avoidance) in four days? You're dead on--it's incredibly disconcerting. Do you remember SimCity? It had copy protection, and if you entered the wrong code, your city would be racked with disasters. That is, there would be an earthquake and floods and fires. In SimCity 2000, riots could break out. But that doesn't happen in America! Oh shit--yes, it does.

I see two saving graces here. One: the chaos is limited. Imagine what it was like in the 60s, when there were riots throughout the U.S. and it must've felt like civilization everywhere was crashing down. Two: No one (UBL) did this to us. It was a natural disaster, exacerbated by our own failures, but not the result of conscious malice. We don't have to worry about an angry planet trying to kill us. We, outside of the Gulf Coast, are still as safe as we were yesterday (and may become safer as a result of seeing how badly this seems to have been messed up).

I've been thinking, absolutely nothing good has happened since Bush was elected. The lede in Krugman's column today bears this out. He mentions "the three most likely catastrophic disasters" that FEMA warned about before 9/11 (terrorists in NY, a hurricane in NO, and an earthquake in SF)--so, are we going to get the complete set?