"Hurricane Sandy Blows Away Political Pretense and Ideological Nonsense"

Hurricane Sandy Blows Away Political Pretense and Ideological Nonsense

By Joe Conason at Truth Dig

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hurricane_sandy_blows_away_political_pretense_and_ideological_nonsense_2012/

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The ruin and hardship inflicted by a natural disaster can reveal truths that political propaganda tends to obscure. When Hurricane Sandy destroyed swaths of the Northeast, darkened our largest city and plunged a huge section of the nation into crisis, the anti-government ideology of the tea party Republicans—and its panderers like Mitt Romney—was exposed as pretense and nonsense.

Suddenly responsible for saving their communities and their people, politicians of every stripe reached out for help from the big Washington government and the liberal Democratic president many of them had previously reviled. They were duly impressed by his alert, active and concerned response.

None of this should have surprised us. What we learned from Sandy is the same lesson that Katrina ought to have taught us years ago: The right wing disdain for government can imperil your health, your family’s safety and your nation’s security.

Yet we clearly needed to learn it all again—and the events of the past few days have been starkly instructive.

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