The lake formerly known as New Orleans continues to descend into chaos. The physical mess will take months to clean up, but, like the LA riots, the repercussions from the looting, rape, beatings, and general lawlessness will last far longer. A civilization rests on the premise that ordinary people are decent and will do the right thing the majority of the time. Once again, this assumption has been shown to be false, at least in our larger cities.

Under the headline of Depot Explosion Over Lawless New Orleans, we find these gems:

Gov. Kathleen Blanco called the looters "hoodlums" and issued a warning to lawbreakers

Yea, Gov; name calling and warnings are going to stop the looting. How about a shoot-to-kill order? Oh yea. I forgot. Your one of them womyn that are so superior to us men. Maybe you should cry some more on national television.

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said FEMA just learned about the situation at the convention center Thursday and quickly scrambled to provide food, water and medical care and remove the corpses.

How can this be? I knew about the lack of water and sanitation, and ever-growing piles of corpses at the convention center on Tuesday. Does the head of FEMA not watch the news? Or maybe he just has his head so far up his ass that it took two days for the sound waves to penetrate. Maybe Michael Brown is a good guy outside of his job, but he is a complete waste of human skin as director of FEMA. He should be fired, then charged with one count of negligent homicide for each person that has died since Monday. Should be, but we all know he won't. Instead he will receive an award and a promotion.

Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "'Go to hell - it's every man for himself.'"

....

To make matters worse, the chief of the Louisiana State Police said he heard of numerous instances of New Orleans police officers - many of whom from flooded areas - turning in their badges.

"They indicated that they had lost everything and didn't feel that it was worth them going back to take fire from looters and losing their lives," Col. Henry Whitehorn said.

The thin blue line seems to have thinned to the point of non-existence. We have taught the last two generations that society exists only for MY benefit; to provide ME with everything I could ever want and little or no cost to ME. When society stops supplying MY every whim, why would anyone be surprised that I would walk away?

On a brighter note: it seems that the citizens of Texas at least still cling to some old fashioned notions of what a civilization is. Of course we all know that as soon as the Feds show up, the hot dog griller will be charged with violating food safety laws and operating a vending cart without a permit.