During times of national stress the prayer birds come out of the wood work. Not only religious leaders, but political leaders, and media talking heads ask people to pray or offer prayers.
On Tuesday I read where Kathleen Blanco, governor of Louisiana, called on people to pray for the victims of Hurricane Katrina that slammed into the states of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi on Monday August 29th. President Bush said he and First Lady Laura Bush were praying for them as well.
By Thursday all hell had broke loose in New Orleans as victims snapped under the strain of going 4 days without much food and drinking water. But hey, we are praying for you.
I kept thinking “Get off your asses and get help into the city. Stop wasting time praying!”
Some religious right nut jobs even suggest that the hurricane was God’s way of punishing “us” for “our” sins.
Pat Robertson, one of the nut jobs, said once back in 1998:
“I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you.”
He said it in response to Orlando hosting a Gay Pride Festival and Disney World having a Gay Day.
But attributing a natural storm to the will of a “God” is not a rational way to explain coincidences. In Robertson’s case, no hurricanes went through or near Orlando. So does that mean God was ok with the Gay Pride Festival?
If you want to play the “God” game one could also draw a conclusion that God hates Republicans.
Katrina slammed into Alabama, home to Judge Roy Moore who ignored a federal court ruling forcing him to remove a 10 Commandments monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building.
The storm leveled coastal towns in Mississippi, whose Governor is Haley Barbour, formerly the national chairman of the Republican Party. The state is also home to Senator Trent Lott who use to be Senate Majority Leader before his mouth forced him to step down from that job.
Katrina previously had hit Florida, whose Governor is President Bush’s brother Jeb and is thought to have helped his brother “steal” the 2000 election for the President. In fact God must really hate Jeb because Katrina is the 5th hurricane to hit Florida in two years.
A religious conservative writer pointed out that Katrina hit New Orleans just before it was due to host the Southern Decadence festival which was described as “a six-day public homosexual orgy.” But Katrina didn’t hit New Orleans. The rule of the God game is that it has to hit the object God hates and Katrina turned to the right before making land fall, missing the city with a direct hit. It turned to the right and hit Mississippi directly.
Why doesn’t God send hurricanes to hit bigger places of sin like Las Vegas, New York, or Hollywood?
I guess he thinks those places and people are ok, but he must really hate the Bible belt and Republicans.
I think I like the God game.
Correction:
In my last post I mentioned how FEMA was changed after the mess of the Hurricane Andrew relief effort in 1992. Like everyone else I expected to see massive efforts on the ground to help those who were vicitms of Hurricane Katrina.
I guess I spoke to soon and assumed too much. It is Friday, 4 days since the hurricane blew through and FEMA and the Federal Govt. is JUST NOW getting the machine going. I am shocked and disgusted with the foot dragging. The effort so far is a disgrace for the US.
I travel to the Miss gulf coast regularly, and I am not surprised at the amount of damage they incurred. Most of the buildings down there never looked all that structurally sound in the first place.What did always strike me as odd was the presence of the casinos. Somehow it was alright to have casino barges on the water, but it was wrong to have the casinos on dry land. If the law had allowed the casinos to build on land, the industry would still be viable. Now they have no economic base and won't for some time in the future. Most of the casino barges were lost or severely damaged. The casino hotels however, mostly suffered only minor damage. Now if the casinos would have also been built the same way the hotels were, Mississippi would be able to recover from this much more quickly.