Other Crap

"What Would Tyler Durden Do" on rebuilding Haiti

"I hope Haiti gets back on their feet, but are they trying to fix it like it was before, or does Haiti need a whole new country? Because even before the quake the buildings and roads look like Earth on that 'Life After People' show, except Haiti has people. What have they been doing for 300 years? How do we know what buildings to fix? How do we know which ones were broken by the earthquake and what ones were already fucked up? Are we just taking their word on this? How does that work? If you were an insurance agent, and someone wrecked their 95 Accord, you wouldn't give them a Maybach would you? This is exactly like that, except in this case the person didn't have any insurance, and instead of a 95 Accord they had a rusty bike with no seat."

Scoop's note: He probably thinks he is running a rant in a particularly dark style of humor, but there is a lot of truth underneath that rant. Unlike most Americans, I have been to Port-au-Prince before the earthquake. When I saw the televised pictures of the city after the devastation caused by the earthquake ... well, my first reaction was not like yours. You wept because it looked like Berlin after WW2. Yes, you were right, but I wept because the current tragedy is only part of the ongoing tragedy of Haiti. My first thought was that Port-au-Prince looked pretty much the same after the earthquake.

I know some of you think that is a cruel joke. Sadly enough for the people of Haiti, it is not a joke at all. That was really my reaction. The economy of Haiti consists of not having an economy (which qualifies them for aid from other countries.) The World Economic Forum ranked Haiti last in its 2003 Global Competitiveness Report. LAST. Think of all the dipshit hardscrabble countries in the world like Eritrea and Afghanistan, and realize that one in our hemisphere is worse. Haiti is so close to Florida, closer than Puerto Rico, that it might have been part of the USA if the "new world" had been settled just slightly differently. It's something like 90 miles from Key West to Cuba, and even less from Cuba to Haiti.