Disaster Pauses

Tragedies, be they personal or national, affect different people in different ways. There is not one correct way to respond, so we should try to be patient with a variety of responses. Most bloggers I've noticed have either posted much less or much more since Katrina hit. Joining me in posting less have been Mike, Eric, and steakboy, each with credible explanations for their relative quietude. Respectively:

"I can hardly bear reading any more about Katrina much less writing about it and it just does not seem appropriate to talk about anything else."

"Current events here and abroad, coupled with the heartbreaking, corrupt impotence of my country's leaders (both Republican and Democrat) have made me so weary of late."

"the enormity of it all leaves me room to think of pretty much nothing else"

But others such as David Goldstein have been blogging like there's no tomorrow, both in reaction to Katrina and on a host of other issues. Actually, Goldy, as he's affectionately known, pretty much always blogs like there's no tomorrow. But his energy around the abysmal federal response to the disaster, played a major role in outing the preceding reputation of the now discredited Mike Brown of FEMA. (See the story here, and in various posts here.) The role that a quirky google hit played in prompting a national story is testament to the possibility that any one of us can play a role in our world beyond what we might imagine.

Katrina's wake will be following us around for some time to come, and my heart goes out to her victims. In the meantime, elections loom at home and injustice and inequity are never on vacation. Here I hope to pick up on some regular themes and expand on them with new information. As the ratio between executive compensation and line worker pay continues to spike out of control, I'd like to examine how such an obscenity can possibly be justified. Disaffection with Republicans seems at an all-time high. Why can't Democrats seem to capitalize? What are the political prospects for the 2006 mid-terms? And as always I'll look for glimmers of hope in these dark times.