Back in 2005, when New Orleans was hit by a huge calamity, a monster of mythic proportions, there were a great many people, most of whom should have known better, calling us a bunch of shiftless no-counts, asking how anyone could possibly be stupid enough to build a city in such a vulnerable location, advocating the “bulldozing” of all or part of the city (which had supposedly “outlived its usefulness” anyway…), saying New Orleans was not even “really” part of the United States, that we New Orleanians were all a bunch of leeches living off everybody else’s hard  labor, even that we were on some kind of “lower level of consciousness” and thus had to be “erased”, and so forth – kicking people when they’re down seeming to have become de rigueur in our age of “cool to be cruel”.

Today I find myself heartened by people’s reactions to more recent disasters. The Gulf Coast from Corpus Christi all the way into western Louisiana swamped by Harvey; the Caribbean and Florida trashed by Irma; then Maria following a very similar path to Irma through the same regions, as if to finish off whoever and whatever Irma had left standing; and zero sign of any meanness from anybody – at least that I’ve noticed.

Maybe we’re seeing an ascent of consciousness, an increase in compassion and empathy? It may be still too soon to hope for the Revolution of Tenderness advocated by Pope Francis, but might this be its beginning, or part of its ongoing process?

Also, I can’t help but remark on one more thing: the most notorious advocate of bulldozing New Orleans, Dennis Hastert (then Speaker of the House of Representatives), ended up in jail over a complex scheme involving hush money that he was paying to at least one victim of his twisted sexual appetites (details here, and here). The self-regulating universe, indeed…