Liberals and Conservatives and Katrina

I am only willing to consider the motivations of those who are honorable, on both sides of the aisle.  True, there are liars and scoundrels and thieves on both sides, but the EASY thing to do is assume that, if someone has a different point of view, they must be wrong, or they must be bad.  But what if the "other guy" is seeing the same mountain, only from a different direction.  I am certain that to some, my point of view might seem Pollyannaish, but frankly I've met too many good folks--and too many assholes-- on either side to believe that one or the other has a corner on goodness, or intelligence...although both sides seem to believe that of themselves.
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In terms of Katrina, there is one important difference that comes out--a difference in the attitude about what will create the strongest America, and what is best for the poor.  The Left generally has the attitude that the poor must be helped from above.  The Right, that they must learn to help themselves, and that any help from above actually weakens them.  My attitude, obviously, is somewhere in the middle.  Why?  Because although I was raised in a single-parent inner-city home, my mother completely indoctrinated me with the belief (through psycho-cybernetics, Power of Positive Thinking, and Think and Grow Rich-type tapes played over and over and over and over...) that our minds make the difference.  "We become what we think about."  "What a man can conceive and believe, he can achieve."  Etc. etc. 
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Is it true?  Well, no plan, no education, no course of action can guarantee success, but there are certainly some that guarantee failure--for instance the belief that Mommy and Daddy will always be there to take care of you.  We all know people like this--black and white--and they are the flotsam and jetsom of life, let me tell you.  We all want to believe that someone will come to help us, all want to believe that someone will get us out of our jams, pay our bills, love us no matter what.  This is a belief that most of us must be levered away from with a crowbar, usually somewhere in our teens.  The longer it takes to learn the lesson that life meets NO ONE half-way, the better off we are.  So I honestly believe that without the emotional education my mother gave me, I would have accomplished virtually nothing.  If I had ever, for a moment, stopped and said "life is unfair!" and brooded about it, I would have been steamrollered.  Yes, you have all noted my occassional rants about certain aspects of racism or whatever, but that's just a rant, folks.  I have to vent somewhere.  I honestly believe that the single thing that would help poor people more than anything else is to change the way they think--and I've known enough poor people, and seen (what I perceived as) the drastic mis-match between their reality maps and reality, that I'll stand by this KNOWING that I can't be "right"--after all, what is ultimately "true" or "not-true" simply isn't available to us while we're still inside the system.  I CAN say that the beliefs most poor people I've spoken to (thousands) about money, power, "the system", etc., simply don't match any beliefs of any successful people, white or black, that I've ever met.  Needless to say, this attitude of mine is one of the reasons I get along with those on the Right.
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On the other hand...
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I find it also difficult to deny that those born in poverty, or the descendants of slaves, were handed a raw deal not their own making.  That the average white person, born poor and black, would perform no better.  That, moreover, even if the parents of a child are worthless, the child deserves a chance.  Further, that wealthy people get "bailed out" by the system all the time.  And here we come to another difference between the Right and the Left. I believe that Conservatives tend to think that the good in society flows from the Top down--the innovators, the leaders, the captains of industry create the wealth all enjoy, and are therefore entitled to more of the goodies, including more help from the government.  The Left tends to believe that good flows from the bottom up.  "Workers of the world unite--you create the goods, you till the fields, you produce the wealth that is then stolen by the bosses and the idle rich."  Tax the rich until they're dead.  Screw raising the minimum wage...how about a MAXIMUM wage?  In other words, each side is looking at the question "how shall we build a society" and "how is it that men and women make their way in the world" and comes up with different answers, based largely on the initial position in which they were born.  born to privilege?  YOu tend to believe that wealth is produced by effort, intelligence, and prudent investment.  Born poor?  You tend to believe that the wealthy are unethical and venomous.
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so to Katrina.  I believe that the majority of Americans, the VAST majority of Americans, were justly horrified by what they saw, and are seeing.  But in some cases, their perceptions of why it happened, or what should be done, were different.  Those on the Right tend to believe that we HAVE to be more self-reliant, that expecting government to help us is a recipe for disaster.  Those on the Left say that expecting poor individuals to help themselves is jsut blindness and cruelty.  The Right replies that if they don't learn to help themselves, they are dooming future generations to the same poverty.  The Left replies that the victims of Katrina were largely the descendants of slaves, robbed of EVERYTHING for hundreds of years and then turned loose in the culture without any resources, settling into poverty lifestyles and thwarted by racism from rising from their knees.
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What is the truth?  Hell if I know. I know what I believe--that the way out of poverty is to take different actions, and hold different emotions in our hearts, different plans in our minds.  But also that it is the obligation of the "haves" to reach out to the "have-nots" both for spiritual and social reasons.  I can sympathize with both points of view, but know that I, personally, know that there is a point of deprivation where the mind and heart just shut down, where the victim crouches in the corner and quivers, regardless of what might have been their initial potential.  I've known far too many intelligent white people crippled by negative emotions, spiritually damaged by their early experiences, not to believe this true.  Look around any science fiction convention, and you'll find "smart" folks by the hundreds who are dysfunctional physically, socially, and financially--but smarter than hell.  And on a social, systemic level, poverty and racism is like child abuse applied to an entire strata of society.  Yes, it is our obligation to save ourselves.  Yes, it is our obligation to help those who cannot help themselves.  HOW to help them?  Well, in the short term, food, water, shelter, jobs and money.  Long term?  Well, I'm disgusted that the simplest, most effective means of turning your life around--learning how to set and keep goals--has never been taught in any public school I've ever heard of.  As far as I'm concerned, public education misses the boat in this essential aspect almost 100%, leaving this crucial knowledge to be passed down in advantaged families only.   THAT'S what I'd do to help the poor.  To familiarize them from early childhood, with the thought patterns of the rich and successful.  And, of course, to provide them the basic amenities of life in emergencies, that they feel they are invested in our culture.  Otherwise, we are breeding our own barbarians, and Rome will fall from within.