analog

The more you have, the more comfortable you are, the harder you fall when it's yanked out from underneath you. Many Americans will bitch if they have to walk more than 30 feet to get to anything from where they park their cars.

I can't tell you the bitching, whining, yelling, and anger displayed after Charlie hit us here in central florida last year... most people still had their homes- perhaps battered, beaten roofs, but still inhabitable- and the stores and restaurants with power had food, water, etc., as fast as they could unload it.

For pretty much most everyone- unless your entire home was destroyed- your major problem was a lack of power. That's it. I lost it for a week, many more lost it for a lot longer. The whining and bitching I saw was after only TWO DAYS of little or no power. It was insane.

The thing that gave me hope, though, was the amount of aid some people gave each other. I was at the Home Depot about 1 minute from my house, actually just picking up some screws for a project I was going to work on.. and a shipment of tarps, batteries, flashlights, generators, all that sort of stuff pulled up. It was all bundled together, so it took some time and people to get it all out and in usable stacks... but I was standing around watching this, and realized that there were a ton of people waiting on these supplies... and only about half of the people unloading the supplies had Home Depot vests on. I asked someone, and it turns out that random people who were there for other reasons, just jumped in and started helping to unpack, move, whatever. I really couldn't believe it. The manager (I didn't hear of this happening anywhere else, so I don't think it was corporate) even dropped the price on all that stuff to basically just a bit over cost, and even dollar amounts... so a pack of 4 C's that cost $5 before was only like $2 if i remember correctly, including tax... so all these people were just pushing whole-dollar cash back and forth (no having to make coin change) and the line went really fast. He even had 1 register set aside for "everything inside the store" and all the rest were running JUST for the provisions from the truck.

Sorry to side-track, just thought i'd TRY to put a little sunshine on the human race... because right now, the government has been failing those in need for several days now, and the very worst of human behavior has become pervasive there.