On Sun, 6 Aug 2006 18:26:33 -0500, "Jeff McCann"
wrote:

It's my job. One thing I have learned is that our
society's coping mechanisms are quite robust.
=================================
In academic terms this is called an error of composition.
Society is not a monolith, and is becoming less so all the time.

Some segments of society and areas of the country may well be
able to "cope," but these will *NOT* be the same for all
problems. It is well to remember in this context "cope" does not
mean a continuation of the current soccer-mom "high conspicuous
consumption / air conditioned" life-style to which they are
accustomed, but rather survival as in "staying alive."

Historically, there were two successive and compounding errors
that produced national disasters on this scale.

#1 the failure to accurately and timely identify the problem(s);
and
#2 was the incorrect identification of the causes (there may well
be several).

Minority groups have always been popular scape goats, but
ignoring the moral factors, punitive actions / pogroms have
never cured anything, and have generally made the problems worse
by diverting time/effort/attention away from the real
problems/causes.


Unka George
(George McDuffee)

....and at the end of the fight is a tombstone white
with the name of the late deceased, and
the epitaph drear:
“A Fool lies here, who tried to hustle the East.”

Rudyard Kipling The Naulahka, ch. 5, heading (1892).