The Storm after the Storm

David Brooks writes about The Storm After the Storm. He is chiefly worried about the social upheaval that may come after the disaster happening in New Orleans. His thesis is:

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.

And he concludes that:

Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or wanting. What's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor. The political disturbances are still to come.

In other words, the African-Americans are going to explode over the treatment of the poor in New Orleans.

The rich folks got away to safety. The poor were left to die.

And people say that class warfare is dead. The rich wage it every single day.