Are you looking for some reading? A polite discussion perhaps, a worthwhile to and fro about Katrina? Try this at Crooked Timber and then this and this at Asymmetrical Information.

Like Bill Clinton (who didn’t even have a father around)? Or Ronald Reagan, whose father was a drunk?

While the rags-to-riches idea may have its share of myth to it, the liberal myth of class inflexibility is even more seriously overstated.

I do not blame “the poor” for their poverty (as if it were possible to lump such a diverse group into one class!), but I have absolutely no problem stating the obvious—that your chances of getting poor and staying poor go way up if you make a practice of ignoring what Kipling called “the gods of the copybook headings”, namely, basic common sense. Having children without first committing to set up a stable household is stupid, and will keep you poor, for example. (Ask my brother-in-law.)

That said, it does seem that the working and middle classes are starting to be squeezed—by housing, education, and medical costs, which generally aren’t counted fully in inflation estimates but sure as hell inflate the amount that gets taken from us.

Although I’m about as Republican as they come, the first Democrat who publicly states that the bubble in real estate is absolutely killing those of us who weren’t lucky (or smart) enough to buy something—anything—four years ago will have my vote. He or she can make abortion legal up to the twentieth trimester, declare everything that breathes an endangered species, turn the Marines into self-esteem therapists, and make gay marriage mandatory—but if he ends the mortgage interest deduction for second homes, ends the 1031 tax-deferred exchange, and taxes speculation in real estate up the yin-yang, I’ll vote for him in a heartbeat.

in the contemporary US, people rarely speak German…

That’s true—they rarely do. Ever stop to consider why? (Dan Simon)

Otto was leaving aside the obvious point about US cultural literacy, Dan.

Likewise the social mobility. It’s not as easy as the old myth suggests, and it isn’t as hard as the new mythology surrounding the Bush family would suggest, but whether it’s college or White House, look at what you have to risk.

Somebody mentioned a Korean shopowner with a daughter at Harvard; just owning the shop is a huge step up from poverty. Somebody mentioned a peanut farmer who became President; it’s a huge peanut farm, and President Carter qualified as a Nuclear Engineer in the Navy.

These things are myths in part because the story does get filtered. But some things are natural myths, the sorts of simplification which everyone had been doing for millenia. Other things are more deliberate. Whatever the reason, discovering a more complete truth can hurt.

Two months ago, in London, there were four terrorist bombs. There was, for a little while, chaos and confusion. Yes, it was on a far different scale, but we can still believe that our government can cope. The myth of London has been reinforced, not destroyed.

65 years ago, London was being bombed by the Germans. It’s a city at the top of that short list of ballistic missile targets. You sort of expect London to be ready for things that go bang!

You have much the same sort of reason to expect the USA to be ready for hurricanes hitting the Gilf Coast.

Now I know this has to be a lie, because no way is America is generous and free country and land of oportunity et al and only Kennedys go to Harvard and only Bushes go to Yale (or do middle class kids from Arkansas go there as well?)

I put an extra two bucks in the tip jar so he could get psychriatic help for his delusions.
Kenny

The fact is we are supposed to be a “government of the people, by the people and for the people”, and having lived through a flooding when HUD existed, and having volunteered in New Jersey in ‘86 for some unremembered named Hurricane, and having also served in the US Army as well as worked for a private concern in Iraq, it is clear to me that our present Government failed the people of the hard-hit Gulf States. Previous responses that I either indirectly or directly witnessed, or took direct part in were quick and as effective as the situation would allow.

That is not to say that this time the people in the neighboring States failed, they did not, or military support outright failed, it did not. It was a clear and obvious Federal Administration failure, and worse, they failed the poorest among us. It is a shame that the American People as a whole will have to deal with, and as usual, we will deal with it in a very public way (to our credit, I believe).

It will be painful, and it will take some time.

Hopefully the structural problems of disparate wealth distribution, racism, energy policies, and emergency preparedness will improve somewhat.

Unfortunately all this pent-up anger between the haves and have-nots, and the newly defined liberals and newly defined conservatives that is prevalent throughout the US will make it difficult at best, but we’ll get through it, one way or another. We’re only human, as Katrina as clearly shown the world.