Hatey

There are now two profound aphorisms between the difference between conservatives and liberals. The old one, I learned from a professor at one of the service academies. He said conservatives defend against the excess of the state by reliance on family; liberals defend against dysfunctions of the family by reliance on the state. That makes conservatives more feudal, and I say that's not entirely a bad thing. 

The second profundity comes from none other than Jay Leno who said, Democrats like people in general but nobody in particular while Republicans like people in particular and nobody in general. The more I think about this, the greater number of associated truths I find with it. And it is with that in mind that I am considering the analysis of the great hodload of commentary we are bound to suffer through over the catastrophe on top of the disaster wrapped up in the calamity that is Haiti. 

My heart goes out to nobody in particular, I just want the problem to be fixed. 

An earthquake of magnitude 7 is something just over the edge of what is humanly tolerable. A five can scare the mess out of you. A six is 10 times that and a 6.5, which is probably the biggest I've ever experienced makes you feel lucky to be alive with your house in one piece. When an earthquake of a 6.5 magnitude hits, it feels like your house has just been rear-ended on the freeway by the house next door. In a seven, I imagine that even if you were in an open field, you'd be knocked off your feet. In Haiti, the destruction is of Biblical proportions. And that's all you need to set Americans off on moral tirades.

One of the things you don't often hear is the extent to which Haitians are considered apart from their Caribbean cousins. If you grow up black and bourgie here in the States, there are any number of political sentiments that view all descendants of slaves in the New World to be brothers in struggle. So we are likely to first encounter CLR James, Aimee Ceasaire and Franz Fanon before we actually meet any Haitians in the flesh. So it was a bit of a surprise, given the kind of love Americans gave to Aristide, to find the kind of animosity out in Brooklyn where more Haitians live anywhere beside Haiti. The animosity doesn't come from native Black Americans like me, but from the lot of other Caribs, and it doesn't take long to find out why. The Haitians I met were some of the most argumentative, stubborn, heardheaded people I've ever met. But my barbershop experiences don't count for much - still there was the rest of Afro-Caribbean Brooklyn and that sentiment was rarely indifferent. Look at a map. Haiti is not an island unto itself. It shares Hispanola with the Dominican Republic. So if you like I have gotten an earful from Dominicans, you'll know that lots of people hate Haitians for lots of reasons. Whatever you do, don't mistake one for the other, the feeling is mutual. 

Those things that terrorize and devastate Haiti have rarely left so horrible a mark on their neighbor whose per capita GDP is almost seven times greater. Haiti is deforested. The DR is lush. And so with this earthquake, you'll likely see a serious refugee problem as the border gets rushed. 

But getting back to our awareness, independent of the facts, there's going to be a great deal of political makeup applied to the situation in Haiti. Pat Robertson is starting some of it. Surely people will rehash stories of Clinton's backstabbing of Aristide, and President Obama will have his own disaster made up to order so that he can be favorably compared to GWBush. Hacks all over the web will be spewing a great deal, and it will be interesting to track some of it. You can already smell the acrimony in the YouTube commentary as an indication of the low level of grudges at work. 

Here's some Cobbian Context on Haiti

• Aristide (Sep 2007)
• Looking for Trouble (March 2004)
• On Haiti (March 2004)
• Or Else (Feb 2004)

I'm keeping an eye out. 

Since I am in mind of Taleb, the first thing I thought of before I heard that there were perhaps 100,000 dead, was of the sort of risk management inherent in building codes. Naturally, I grew up in Los Angeles thinking this was the greatest city on earth except that New York and Chicago had taller buildings. Why oh why? Earthquakes is why. But we've learned how to build skyscrapers that are designed to withstand the 200 year event of a 7 magnitude quake. And so there is great expense in planning for that kind of Black Swan. And so having survived a number of earthquakes here, I'm always curious as to how it happens that other nations do not adopt those codes. Simply stated, they are poor and life is cheaper there. They deal. They live with it. They die with it.

I know Haiti has more problems than just money. This is the event that destroys it once and for all. Prepare for boat people. I think the calls are already out for special immigration loopholes.