Late to the party

[danalwyn]

Earlier I linked to a David Brooks column in the NYTimes of Jan 15, 2010 as a direct part of this post. However, it's been pointed out to me that even though we start at the same point, his final conclusions are sufficiently objectionable that attempting to relate the two arguments causes confusion. To that end, I have removed the reference,

Comments

[lookingforwater]

Um.

Dude.

Haiti was not prepared for the quake because Haiti did not have the resources to prepare for the quake.

Haiti did not have the resources to prepare for the quake because it has been consistently fucked over by basically everyone and everything.

Check your privilege.

[danalwyn]

I'm pointing out that the reason Haiti didn't have those resources is because it has been fucked over by everyone and everything; if we want to prevent these sort of problems, we need to be prepared to help nations develop the kind of infrastructure they need to resist this affair, rather then simply come later to pick up the pieces.

[lookingforwater]

Brooks was really, really not saying that, and I don't know how you managed to read otherwise.

[danalwyn]

Brooks and I started from the same point, that poverty is the cause of disasters, not the other way around. However, you are correct that I do not agree with his endpoint, so I will remove the reference from my post with explanation.

[danalwyn]

I feel I owe you a more direct explanation of what I was thinking; the problem is that Brooks and I started from the same analogy (which I had even before he used it), and the same root cause; the earthquake disaster was caused by poverty. I felt that attempting to write something in that vein without referencing his article, at the very least, would invite calls of plagiarism. Because of this I referenced it without thinking about how his conclusions would taint my own argument. This was my fault, and I am sorry that it happened.

[lookingforwater]

I don't think anyone except Pat Robertson and his gang of merry idiots is arguing that the scope of the tragedy in Haiti has its roots in anything other than the nation's extreme poverty. No one's going to accuse you of plagiarism for using that as a starting point.

[danalwyn]

That's not true actually. I've seen several people attempt to pass this off as an "Act of God" and something we never could have predicted. The earthquake itself might be an Act of God, but the fact that sooner or later something was going to damage Haiti pretty badly was obvious, and I'm tired of people pretending that there was nothing we could have done previously.

(Then again, those might have been Robertson's henchmen).