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Old 08-31-2005, 12:25 PM   #8
Earthmother
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Join Date: Mar 2003
Home MUD: GateWay MUD
Posts: 68
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You know, I'd go if I could, too. But, I can't. It's a financial impossibility. The best I CAN do is send in a small donation to an organization that I know is already on the scene.

As for seeing people in 3rd world countries behaving like feral animals, SURE I DO. Like Paul McCartney sang, "People are the same where ever you go."

As for focusing on what you actually said...there were a lot of 'if's in your statement. You didn't say you WOULD, you said "If". Like a bunch of the rest of us, all you CAN do right now is pray. If you were sure the money would be spent as you'd want it to be, you'd give, but since you have no control over who gets it, you won't.

Did you really expect that whole series of statements to go unchallenged?

There's not much I can do in this little corner of the world that I have. But you know what? I *can* put myself in those people's places. I don't know that I'd be taking plasma TV's, but I *might* take a cartload of clothing for myself and my children if everything we had otherwise had been ruined/lost. I can see myself being unable to evacuate, because of no money or transportation. I can even see being a basically 'bad' person and just doing it because I could get away with it for the moment. When all around is chaos, sometimes it is easy to get caught up in that chaos. It's not right, it's as terrible as price-gouging. I would NOT be proud of myself for having looted in a situation like this. But there's still a part of me that 'understands' why people would do this, even to the extreme of plasma TV's. And that part of me can't see punishing all for the actions of the few.

Those people most likely will be prosecuted. Then, yay, we'll have to fund their trials and imprisonments, as well as our insurance premiums increasing across the board anyway. Until that day comes, maybe you're right...we should all just withhold aid to that region, until all the looters are rounded up for prosecution. All the people who decided to try and weather the storm should be prohibited from ever receiving aid. Shoot, maybe they'll all just drown riding their plasma TV's and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Darwinism at its finest! Cremation: cheaper'n prosecution and incarceration!

Go ahead and call me self-righteous, while you take up a collection *for YOURSELF* so that you can go down "once things settle." Money spent on YOU going down there later surely couldn't be used by the Red Cross *now*. It's not self-rightousness I feel...only compassion, sadness and distress that people will be able to justify NOT helping those in need via your exact arguments.

I hope your trip to the region, later on, goes swimmingly.
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