this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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GenZedong
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It depends on which government.
The US is still a federal system with states acting as sovereign entities with powers and responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is for disaster relief. FEMA is there to provide guidance and resources, but disaster relief is supposed to be deployed at the state level. This is one of reasons why the National Guard has responsibilities to individual states.
Hawaii has never seen any wildfire or wildfire conditions like this before: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/climate/hawaii-fires-climate-change.html
Of course there should be preparations to counter climate change as it continues to aggravate situations like this, but I don't like the excuse where the feds can blame the states and the states can blame the feds when shit hits the fan. It has become an excuse for inaction. Hurricane Katrina, Texas ice storms, California wildfires, the Kentucky floods, this could have been sorted out looonng ago.
Why do we make the choice to keep things this way when they always lead to disasters?
Don't you know? It's far more important to toss the blame football around than to actually prevent or alleviate disasters. Helping people? Bah! Far more important that we can blame someone else for the problem.
The problem is that the alternative is having the federal government immediately intervene in any emergency, which states would likely complain about.
I guess the problem then is I care about having a government that doesn't want to kill me or leave me to die, then. Excuse me, I should have been caring about civility within our decaying governing structure while people roast alive on the street! Oh you've made me see the light, you sure have.
I'm not trying to convince you this is correct, just explaining the politics behind why the situation exists. Or maybe you want a strongman who will protect you until they don't.
I was noting that the failure of the disaster response seems to be due to local government officials failing in their job.
What is the responsibility of a larger government entity for the governance of cities?
The federal government can assist, it just needs local permission to do so.
And the federal government is mobilizing to assist, but they aren't going to be in the initial response.
I wasn't giving you a tough independent American rhetoric, I was explaining how American government works and you took it as something else.
Federalism is baked into how the USA governs itself. I can't explain disaster response without noting who the lead government agency is.
It you know better, how do you make the federal government the lead agency in responding to natural disasters?
In this one case, but there is also the 90 tonnes of steel AI Weiwei straightened after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.
I never said better.
I never said a strong centralized government was bad, just that it wouldn't be tolerated in the current political framework.
You interpreted that as being bad.
Or maybe you just want someone to argue with.
I was mentioning it in the context of the USA. I've been bringing up Trump as an example of a person in charge of the federal government who didn't respond to requests from states for aid. During COVID, the federal government denied assistance to states that were politically against Trump. Putting all disaster response in the hands of the federal government could cause a similar case to happen in the future.
It's the responsibility of the larger government entity to step in in some cases. Like in the cases of natural (or semi-natural) disasters or if the local governance shits the bed to the extent that people are dying. We're not dealing with free imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire here, cities aren't sovereign entities they're administrative regions for the government.
But how long does it take to figure that out? A few days?
This isn't the Holy Roman Empire, but the bureaucracy isn't as fast as people think it is and the initial response is still expected to be lead by the state. By the time it becomes apparent the federal government should step in, the response has already failed.
I'd rather be protected "until they don't" than not protected at all.
But maybe you don't need a "strongman" to do that, but a robust system designed to deal with disasters. Doesn't matter how strong an individual man is, he can't fight wildfires alone.
Maybe just coldly explaining why the system doesn't help people isn't actually the "gotcha" argument you think it is. Maybe you should be demanding the system should help people, instead of just shrugging and saying that it doesn't because of reasons.
But in the end, there needs to be a specific authority to answer to disasters. Right now, and for a while, it is state governments as making the federal government responsible erodes state sovereignty.
Outside of Trump, the federal government is there to help when asked, but it is still the responsibility of the states to manage response efforts.
Just FYI, I'm not American, and our state and federal governments have no problem co-operating when it comes to disaster relief, regardless of who is in charge. Our states will send firefighters around the country to where they're needed, no questions asked, or hand-wringing about budgets or finger pointing at shitty politicians.
This idea about "states rights" is monstrous. A state is an intangible, it is just lines drawn on a map. You know what's more important than that? Saving people's lives. You guys are so worried about imagined tyranny that you'll literally subject yourselves to far worse fates just in the name of some abject "freedom." What freedom does a dead person have?
Just because something happens in America doesn't mean it happens in the rest of the world. We look at your state of affairs with abject horror most of the time.
Our state and federal governments also don't have issues working together outside of a Trump led administration, but the first emergency response is expected to be led by local and state governments that the disaster happens in.
My state routinely lends state disaster response units around the country to make sure that they are up to speed on different methods of disaster response in disasters that my state expects to see. However, it isn't all disasters as my state doesn't get all disasters.
And I'm explaining the American thinking as the disaster is occurring in the United States of America.
I know you Americans can't remember anything outside of the last 4-8 years, but I assure you, bungling disaster relief has been a thing for much longer than Trump. He didn't come out of nowhere and ruin everything cause he felt like it one day, he's a symptom of the systematic issues your country faces. He's a clown, there to distract people from the larger issues and general incompetence of your entire government. Don't fall for the mindless sports team politics. These issues run far deeper than a single person.
If you want to bring up Katrina, W Bush wasn't asked to bring in more resources by the state of Louisiana after landfall.
Name a time outside of Trump where the federal government denied aid to a state requesting it.
Oh, terribly sorry. I wasn't aware that your people were from the sea and struggle with our strange land mammal ways of communicating.
This should be more helpful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A0l93Bzgbw
I responded to a direct question regarding a failure in government aid. It isn't sealioning to ask for an example to a claim that something is commonplace.
Then let the states complain or, better yet, dissolve the fuckers