“Keeping US Safe”...From the Task of Engaging and Managing our Own Anxieties

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/16-5

A few weeks back, we had an untimely snowstorm here in Connecticut. When snow falls on trees that still have their leaves, a lot of branches break. And when lots of branches break, power lines get knocked down in extraordinarily large numbers.

As I surveyed the wreckage around me after the storm, I was very glad to know that I lived in the world’s emblematic “can do” country. If I lived, for example, in one of those awful banana republics where “public” spaces and services have long since become the hollowed-out playthings of well-connected speculators, or where the National Guard was used to fight wars of aggression rather than serve, as it was explicitly designed to serve, as the bulwark of domestic civil defense, I’d be out of luck.

Yes, I was very glad that I lived here in the heimat and not somewhere else.

However, after a week of providing hot baths and dinners to friends (my house miraculously escaped the power loss experienced by some 90% of the area’s other inhabitants) and watching my children experience an unscheduled eight-day vacation from school, I was not so sure.

More at the link --

The article doesn't follow from the lead paragraphs. It ends up being yet another diatribe against government in general and our system. I'm not sure how the writer got from the lead to the conclusion. I encourage everyone to actually read this article and see if you can decipher the logical process used to get from the recovery from a storm to the author's conclusions.

For each article there. Less work for you.