Posted
8:36 AM
by Gene
Yesterday I rolled my eyeballs because everybody had CATASTROPHE on his lips. Well wouldn't you know,
the head of FEMA used it, although in this case it might be justified because of the famous botch his agency's made of disaster relief in the past.
CATASTROPHE implies something so overwhelming as to be unrecoverable. People died, yes, and a few buildings collapsed, but within weeks the recovery will be full bore (unless of course GOVERNMENT AGENCIES and GREEDY BUSINESSMEN interfere), and God knows more than several of the devastated neighborhoods could BENEFIT from rebuilding. Certainly the swiftness of the evacuation was enough to restore one's faith in government, and without that we WOULD have said CATASTROPHE.
Indeed the LAST thing we need is people moping and declaring how irremediably BAD the situation is because that gets people thinking they're beyond help.