Maman Poulet

After the Storm

Hurricanes come in two waves. First comes the rainstorm, and then comes what the historian John Barry calls the "human storm" - the recriminations, the political conflict and the battle over compensation. Floods wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done. They expose the
underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities. When you look back over the meteorological turbulence in this nation's history, it's striking how often political turbulence followed.

David Brooks writes about the politcs after the weather in the New York Times (Registration required).

posted by Maman Poulet @ 9/02/2005 02:20:00 a.m.