I know we're all supposed to be true internationalists these days, for whom ethnicity and language should be irrelevant when it comes to sympathising with the victims of natural disasters. But there's no doubt that when the victims look like us, speak the same language, have the sorts of names we've been familiar with all our lives, display courage, and feel the same way about dogs - as is the case with the people who found themselves in the path of the dreadful Oklahoma tornado - one's response is immediate and entirely genuine.
The brave little children giving their accounts of what happened when the tornado hit their school (it killed at least nine children in total) was particularly harrowing.
God bless the survivors, and may the victims rest in peace.
Don't know if you heard the Senator from Vermont today?
ReplyDeleteBecause, on balance, people in places like Oklahoma and Alabama think Global Warming is Statist nonsense...people in Oklahoma are to blame for the Tornados that destroy their lives...people in Alabama are to blame for the Hurricanes that destroy their coast.
Then we beg people in Vermont and Oregon to come to our rescue.
Yes, read about it on the Daily Caller website (http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/21/boxer-uses-okla-tornado-to-push-carbon-tax/). Apparently Barbara Boxer - a California Democratic Party Senator and a chum of Bernie Sanders - also used dead children to push her junk-science message today, as did Sheldon Whitehouse, another Democratic senator, this time from Rhode Island, who apparently spent fifteen minutes haranguing Republicans on the floor of the Senate for not believing in climate change. What a trio of charming humanitarians. How the Democratic Party got its reputation as the nice, caring party is beyond me, because they seem a peculiarly poisonous bunch.
DeleteAnyway, they're right Mr. B - if you Southerners didn't keep filling up the tanks of your gas-guzzling cars simply in order to make a living (don't you know it's the government's job to take care of you and your family?), none of this would have happened. I hope you're feeling suitably aashamed of yourself - because you be can certain that the aforementioned trio of Democratic bleeding hearts will sleep like babies tonight, knowing they've done their bit to save humanity today, albeit by behaving like pigs.
I emailed a friend in Oklahoma City to make sure she had survived the tornadoes – I'm very pleased to say that she has.
ReplyDeleteShe adds that it's not just tornadoes they face round her neck of the woods but alligators, too. "Dinosaurs still walk the earth in Oklahoma", as the Department of Wildlife Conservation tell us.
Judging by the statistics, that shouldn't put you off visiting Oklahoma. Florida is another matter, with 337 "recent" alligator attacks. Texas can only manage 15, Georgia and South Carolina score nine each.
Remember the earthquake in San Francisco a decade or so back. Mayhem. Auberon Waugh was still alive and he noted in the Spectator that 4,000 trained emergency service staff sprang into action instantly. "Could you see that happening in the UK?", he asked. No. God they're good in the US.
The English travel-writer Jonathan Raban spent some time living in (I seem to remember) Alabama. On a visit to an English class at the local school, he was disconcerted to discover the kids mainly learned English pastoral poetry and seemed to take that view of nature out into the wider world. He wondered whether this was such a good idea, given that nature in England in almost entirely benign, while in America (as he'd rapidly come to realise) it's always trying to kill you - deadly spiders, alligators, bears, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and that's all without entering true wilderness.
DeleteThe Australians are proud to boast that in terms of wildlife they live in the most dangerous country in the world. Great Whites, Stone Fish, Funnel Webs and the like. After reading "The Red Hourglass. Lives of the Predators" I am not so sure. It is written by Gordon Grice who lives in rural Oklahoma.
ReplyDelete...and I forgot to mention mountain lions - although they only kill an average of one human a year.
Delete