The reports of 20,000 dead in Central and South Asia put our own hand-wringing about Katrina into some perspective, don’t you think? I certainly am not implying that one tragedy is inherently worse than the other. But we Americans have a curious reaction to large-scale disasters. I think we’re accustomed to reading about disasters in faraway places as we sip our morning coffee. But when the shit hits the fan here on the home turf, we act all shocked and surprised, like we’re the first people anywhere in the history of the planet who had to go through this. Because we’re Americans, goddamnit. If it doesn’t happen here in the States, then it hasn’t really happened yet. We’re such a media-saturated culture that we can’t place disaster outside the fictional realm of television and movies. When the media interviews the poor schlubs who are coping with the aftermath of a disaster, at least one of them will say, “Man, it was just like what you see in a movie.” Maybe that’s a consequence of both our geography and technological sophistication. When the Big Bad, whether natural or man-made, does slam into our reality, we don’t have any context for it other than a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.
For some reason, my keyboard died (the physical one, not the on-screen version). So I’m off to hunt a replacement down.
