In the latest of "worst [insert natural disaster] since [considerable time ago]," my beloved home state of Indiana (and parts of Kentucky) has been hit by a vicious tornado, killing 22 people and injuring more than two hundred others.
One of the most tasteless jokes I've ever heard involved trailer parks' magnetic ability to call down tornados--"God's way of cleaning out the trash" I think was the gist. I'd like to say that's just a sick sense of humor at work, but I think that, as in many people's reactions to the devastation of the poor in New Orleans, a sickening amount of people's first reaction is "Well, they shouldn't have been living in a trailer. Don't they know better than that?" or "Dumbasses should have known to get the hell out before the storm."
This tornado did hit a trailer park and that was where most of the deaths occurred. I haven't seen any reactions like those I described above, but I'll bet some people are thinking something along those lines. It's the same kind of thinking that would cut off all welfare and tell people "to get a fucking job." It's the type of thinking that utterly fails to recognize that sometimes, those in the tornado's path or in Katrina's path have nowhere to go or at least nowhere they think they can go. And there are reasons why people live in trailer parks, and few of them are voluntary ones or matters of taste.
Natural disasters do not affect people equally. They hurt those most vulnerable the most deeply. Laughing at that ugly fact or satisfying ourselves by explaining it all away in terms of the victims' stupidity, indolence, or bad luck is not constructive. I would say it is morally repugnant.
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