问答题Post Hurricane Katrina
 The southern United States is again being battered by a tropical storm Rita, three weeks after Hurricane Katrina. This time the warnings to leave seem to have been heeded and roads leading away from the threatened areas have been choked with traffic as more than two million people head inland. Following the devastation in New Orleans, the authorities were criticized for not doing enough for those least able to help themselves: the poor, the sick and those without transport. Though this time more provision was made to evacuate people ahead of the hurricane, but in the long term, whether there will be any real change in the US social system?
 As the event of massive force, Katrina swept away an awful lot, but the ghastly failure of the authorities to prepare and to rescue those at risk seems to have done more than the physical damage. Bill Clinton is among many eminent Americans who wonder whether Katrina’s biggest impact might be psychological, political. The real question, putting is baldly, is whether there is going to be a revolution. Will the American social and economic system, which creates the wealth which pays for billionaires’ private jets and the poverty which doesn’t allow for a bus fare out of New Orleans, be addressed? It’s been tinkered with before of course, sometimes as a result of natural disasters. There were for instance plenty of buses on hand for this week’s Rita evacuation. But the system’s fundamentals, no limit on how high you can fly and little limit on how low you can fall, remain as intact as they were in the San Francisco gold rush.
 As Charles Wheeler wrote, one of the tragedies of the Vietnam War had been "the dismemberment of America’s infant welfare state". "The war," he said, "stopped social reform in its tracks and today, with the budget deficit huge and growing, there is no prospect that a windfall of money released by the war can suddenly be applied to the needs of the poor in the cities." Charles was writing in 1973. America did recover. The economy was rescued. Money was made in very large amounts. But the poor still did not receive that windfall; they were never going to.
 Americans are cross with the government and disappointed with the response from Washington, but they have not sat on their hands and waited for the government to sort itself out. Much the opposite, Americans have given with unbridled enthusiasm and generosity. They give money to victims of Katrina; drop off teddy bears they no longer want; dispatch cloth for which they have grown too fat etc. Hurricane Katrina has encouraged an outpouring of charity on a scale never seen before. "Isn’t that something governments do?" Americans don’t think so and never will. This is unquestionably a source of strength and spine in troubled times, but it is just charity that puts a dampener on revolution. Charity ameliorates, it softens blows, it pours oil on troubled waters. It does not lead to social change.
 Inequality is a part of American life and so is self-reliance, nothing alters that. After the weekend’s devastation, America is little changed.