Peter,

Man is inclined to behave accordingly to morals within one's tribe. There are two different tribes involved here.

Go read Bill Whittle's essay on sheep, sheepdogs and wolves. (Whittle"s blog: "Eject!Eject' Eject!")

Allen:

Which tribes does New Orleans have that aren't well-represented in New York?

A Chief.

I don't think that the two disasters are comparable, actually, and I would say that for a variety of reasons, what happened in NYC---to NYC---while certainly awful, pales in comparison to what has happened in and to NO, which witnessed severe destruction, total isolation, and an utter breakdown of order.

This is not to excuse the looting and criminality, which unless it was done to survive the ordeal and/or assist others (i.e., food, clothing, medications) is not to be condoned.

But we're talking apples and oranges here, in my view.

Isn't the point, which Peter alludes to but Harris misses, that we weren't horrified that human beings could sink so low; we were horrified that Americans could sink so low? It is American exceptionalism, not human exceptionalism, that took a beating in New Orleans.

I, AllenS, being a combat veteran, know that the survival of any attack/disaster will depend a lot on the first responses of those in charge. Absent that, individuals who have been taught/trained (morals?) in how to respond to a crisis will do what they have been taught. Good sense, will win the day every time. New Orleans never had a good Chief. The warriors/braves have been reduced to the dove and skunk clans. That's Indian lingo.

David,

Please read Peter's last sentence. "realizing that New Yorkers behaved 'unnaturally'". And I'll opine that the difference is that there was a Chief. Who grabbed ahold of the situation, and calmed everyone's fears. Someone was in charge. I only mention this fact of a man being in charge because: One time in Viet Nam, a Sergeant First Class in my unit said these famous words:
"I've got a yard of dick, and a bag full of balls", and then proceeded to tell us what we were going to do, he would lead, we only needed to follow him. It worked.

Here's Bill Whittle's Tribes. It's a bit long, but worth the effort.

Posted by: erp at September 5, 2005 4:48 PM

Barry: New York ran a controlled experiment. There electric black-outs in 1976 and 28 years later in 2003. The first time major sections of the city were engulfed in riots. The second time there were no problems. Could it be that the Guliani administration and the reform of the police dept. made no difference.

Also compare Louisiana to Mississippi. Bother were clobbered by Katrina. If anything Mississippi was hit harder.

Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 5, 2005 5:11 PM

Behavioral modification and fear of a higher power -- be it God or Rudolph W. Giuliani -- will keep people in line at least initially at a time of crisis. Had 9/11 occurred in New York in 1994, at the beginning of Giuliani's term, we would have seen a different reaction from many of its citizens used to the lawlessness of the third-term Koch and then Dinkins administrations. By 2001, those people knew better, but at the same time, if NYC's police and emergency management personnel hadn't shown the competence they did in the hours and days after 9/11, lawlessness would have broken out.

New Orleans in contrast, is a lot like Washington D.C. was under Marion Barry -- as long as the tourist areas (and in D.C.'s case, governmental areas) were kept relatively crime-free, scant attention was paid to the crime prroblems in other parts of the city. That keeps up a good image by basically locking the problem in a closet on the other side of town, but does nothing to solve the problem so that when a crisis situation occurrs, people behave in the way they've been trained to behave.

Struggling for survival by stealing TVs?

Allen (and others): I'm by no means arguing that leaders don't make a difference. A leader in NO could have formed teams and organized a response and made a huge difference. In fact, some of those things happened on a limited, neighborhood scale. But there's a difference between failing, in the absence of a leader, to demonstrate spontaneous organization, and looting the children's hospital.

David,

As far as "American exceptionalism" taking a beating goes, that ignores a fair amount of recent history of savagery. The LA riots and Miami race riots of '80 come to mind.

I hate to go native on everyone, but maybe it's time to see warrior/men walking around with scalps (of bad men) hanging from the belt holding up the loin-cloth.

The irony, of course, is that the gangbangers are among the most motivated, enterprising folks in the 'hood.

How come I don't see any Red state / Blue state comparisons that OJ likes so much?

It's important to remember that while 9/11 was a disaster, it did not destroy the entire city, and that the forces of law and order was not destroyed, but totally mobilized. This was entirely predictable. Given the same situation, practically anywhere would have reacted the same.

Chris: Mississippi got hammered as bad or worse than New Orleans. My sense is that the problems there weren't as bad, although that may simply be the result of the networks having cameras in NO. The area of wreckage from this storm is the size of England, folks.

When almost all fire and police personnel were redirected towards Lower Manhattan on 9/11, and with all roads into Manhattan shut and most subway lines closed down, there certainly was an oppotunity for the predators to take advantage, just as they did during the 1997 blackout.

It may have been they were as shocked as everyone else about the attack, and failed to act, whereas those in New Orleans had plenty of time to realize flooding and power outages were likely after Katrina, albeit maybe not as severely as it turned out. But that still doesn't absolve Nagin and especially Blanco from taking counteraction against those people, we're it not for the fact too many of them were trying to understand the "root causes" of the looting for the first 24 hours instead of acting, and let the situation get out of hand.

allen:

Leadership is obviously crucial, but I'm not sure where that truism takes you. Leaders and those who are inspired and energized by them come from the same community and are both responding to the need for order and sacrifice. Harris' point is that that dynamic doesn't exist naturally.

Chris:

That's a fair point, but is it not counterbalanced by the fact that the element of stunned incomprehension at what happened and fear of the unknown was much higher in NYC? Nobody had a plan for that one and no one in NO feared Katrina would do a 180 and return. To say it was all predictable and the same would have happened anywhere else strikes me as closer to religious cant than empirical analysis.

Brad: There's nothing unAmerican about rioting.