Biloxi mayor keep things in perspective

[Orrex]

"This is our tsunami."

A.J. Holloway identifies physical destruction and 55 deaths, resulting from a predicted and seasonal weather phenomenon, with a massive geological catastrophe unprecedented in human history and resulting in some 300,000 deaths.

Look, I'm sorry for Biloxi and for the familes of the dead, but this is a perfect example of why the United States is--not incorrectly--identified as hopelessly self-obsessed.

[Double T]

1. Both are horrific tragedies that will have a devastating human and......

economic affect for years to come. The seriousness of both situations has nothing to do with being 'self-obsessed', I'm sorry!!!!!

[Squatch]

2. I agree.

[Bridget Burke]

4. Perhaps the Mayor is a bit distracted right now.

It is "his" Tsunami.

[Orrex]

6. Truly horrible, I agree!

But it's unfortunate that the Biloxi mayor sees fit to equate them in scale.

Perhaps "self-obsessed" isn't the right term, but I suspect that this kind of "no matter how bad you have it, we have it worse" attitude that follows every American disaster--no matter how major or minor--surely can't paint the US as an empathizing nation.

[uppityperson]

9. Where does he say equate them in scale? CNN does (bah)

I missed that part of the article where anyone but CNN referred to the Indian Ocean tsunami. Bah to CNN.

[Orrex]

11. Well, who can defend CNN?

It was shamelessly (but not uncharacteristically) sensationalist of them to link the two.

Nevertheless, "tsunami" is currently all but inseparable from the the recent catastrophe.

[ultraist]

3. The mayor said, "OUR tsunami" meaning the worst they've seen yet

He didn't say their losses were as great.

[jobycom]

5. yeah, let's pick on a man who just lost his entire city.

Let's try really hard to find fault in what he said instead of understanding what he meant. The deaths of 80 people--probably more--and the destruction of the man's town irrelevant, let's make sure he makes perfectly accurate comparisons.

I think there are some DUers who need a sense of perspective more than the Biloxi mayor.

[Orrex]

8. Yeah, let's misstate the view of the poster who's calling for perspective

I undestand what he meant, and I understand that he’s under extraordinary duress. I am able to recognize the enormity of the Biloxi tragedy and also to recognize the monumental destruction in Indonesia and elsewhere. But I refuse to be castigated for recognizing the relative severity of each.

I am sorry for those who died, and I am sorry for their families, and I am sorry for the decimated communties. You called them irrelevant; I did not.

When the London bombings killed dozens of people, there were cries throughout DU to maintain perspective—after all, more people than that die in Iraq each week—and no one condemned those who cited the disparity.

[jobycom]

10. Oh, now you're backing off and squirming

Just apologize for being insensitive. Quit digging deeper.

[Orrex]

13. How am I doing either?

I expressed my sympathy in the original post, and in my reply to you I cited recent and relevant precedent here on DU.

Is that squirming? Is that backing off?

[jobycom]

18. This is stupid

You should read a bit more on what happened to Biloxi. Parts of it are still underwater. Parts that have never flooded before are still underwater. People stayed in those houses because they thought they were safe. There will be more than 80 bodies in this area when this is done. Biloxi was as destroyed as most cities were by the tsunami. Quit arguing crap. Your post insulted a mayor in shock for attempting to make a comparison. Now you're trying to claim your intentions were innocent. Grow up. This isn't some verbal game. I can't reach my parents, my sister, my brother, or my two nieces. I have dozens of friends in this area. My home town may not exist anymore, and the body count in New Orleans might be in the thousands. It might be higher than Galveston. The tsunami comparison may turn out to be perfectly accurate. We may still lose New Orleans altogether. The water is still rising into areas that weren't flooded yesterday. The dikes are leaking, and they are not even sure where. There seem to be new leaks. The whole thing could still fail. And you're playing Beavis and Butthead excuse games.

I'm outta here. I don't know why I wasted my time with this post.

[Orrex]

19. I see that you're unable to discuss this rationally

With that in mind, I don't know why you wasted your time on your post, either.

You are unable to distinguish between a well-predicted, well-understood, seasonally repetitive phenomenon and a once-human-history phenomenon. You determined, from the first words of my first post, that I don't understand the situation, but somehow you do.

I'm sorry that you can't reach your friends and family--really, I am. But that doesn't give you special authority to declare this disaster to be on par with the raw devistation wrought by the tsunami.

And I understand that the Biloxi mayor was distraught and probably pushed far beyond his capacity to articulate rationally. Holy shit, who wouldn't be, in his place? That's why the people most directly affected by a tragedy are not the most expressly qualified to comment upon it rationally. As human beings, they are simply and understandably overwhelmed by the magnitude of it.

The body count may indeed go much higher, and if that happens then I will be grieving as sincerely as you presumably will be. I suspect that you don't believe that, because you have apparently declared me unfit to comment on the hurricane and its aftermath.

[Horse with no Name]

12. Perspective is what allows you to see the difference

between equating horrifying terrorist activities and equating horrifying natural disasters. The disparity of the amount of life lost doesn't make it irrelevant. Just ask someone who lost a family member in the tsunami if they feel a greater loss than someone who lost a family member in the hurricane. I am sure they don't.
For me, although I can acknowledge the tsunami was horrible, I wasn't personally connected to it, therefore, in my eyes, this hurricane is more devastating because there are people that I know that are involved.

[Orrex]

14. Then we appear to have different takes on "compassion"

To me, the ability to maintain compassionate perspective can't be dependent upon knowing someone involved in the tragedy-at-hand. I can be more personally affected by a tragedy involving someone I know, but that shouldn't prevent me from seeing the catastrophes in relative terms.

[Horse with no Name]

15. I doubt we do

Trust me, I am extremely compassionate.
However, if the governor wants to equate his tragedy to the tsunami--I wouldn't worry about it because lives are precious and it doesn't matter how many are lost to make them any more precious. A family that suffers from a housefire in which there is loss of life is that family's tsunami.
It just means that when there is loss of one life--it is just as tragic as the loss of thousands when you break it down family by family.

[Orrex]

17. I don't doubt that you are compassionate

I'm only saying that it seems that we apply it in different ways.

And I infer that you and I are thinking in different scales. If a housefire kills one person, then by your scale it's no different from a block-fire that kills 1,000 people, because we can break it down into individual lives lost.

That's eerily reminiscent of the "one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic" mantra, and I certainly don't suspect that you're a Stalinist!

I'm sorry, but I just can't work with that yardstick, because it simply attempts to deconstruct any tragedy into its basic units, as if that's ultimately how a tragedy affects a person, a community, or a nation.

The trick, for me, is to attempt to recognize a tragedy in individual terms and also in terms of the tragedy as a whole. That approach may compromise my ability to overlook a mayor's response to traumatic emotional stress, but it doesn't prevent me from sympathizing with the suffering of families in Biloxi (and elsewhere).

[uppityperson]

7. My thought on reading about storm surge was it was like tsunami also

The storm surge came on suddenly, raised the water level rapidly like a tsunami would. A "tsunami" comparison does in no way diminish the tragedy of the one last winter, but is a comparison to a tsunami. Realize that there were tsunamis before last yrs, have been since, even though they were not as devastating as that one.

Relax, his town was destroyed, many people dead, from a storm surge that was like a tsunami. Are you going to say we in the NW are "hopelessly self-obsessed" after a big earthquake kills many and destroys many towns because the "predicted phenomenon" was not as big or devastating as the one in Bam?

[crispini]

16. The thing you've forgotten is...

we don't know how many dead are there yet. I think it will be a lot more than 55. :scared: