We would do well to print out this brilliant comment on MetaFilter and keep a copy handy at all times given the faddish resurgence of doomsday cults:
In Katrina, a huge group of refugees, all banded together trying to help each other escape the devastation, was turned back at a bridge by a small group of angry cops from a rich nearby suburb, cops who thought like survivalists. That everybody wants to take your stuff and you’d best be ready to shoot to kill to protect your stuff.
This is the left and the right in a nutshell. The people who want to band together so that everybody can help everybody else, and the people terrified of somebody else taking their precious stuff, and ready to protect it at all costs.
There are always rumors of atrocities when there is a disaster, a breakdown of order, because people want to protect the Hobbesean myth of a basically vicious humanity barely held in check by a civilizing force imposed by authority. Few of them turn out to be true. But the belief that everyone’s just one earthquake away from violent savagery is so very, very precious to so many people and institutions….
And from the same thread:
In the present: If you go to fairly dangerous and crime ridden places today, like South African townships you won’t find Mad Max. You’ll find people who band together, and try to take care of each other as best as they can and while the criminal element is present (in part because it has no where else to go) most people help to keep an eye on their neighbors and protect each other. Word travels among people like crazy, and everyone knows who the bad apples are and tries to avoid trouble. Otherwise people go to their jobs, raise their kids, watch tv and listen to the radio, visit each other, sleep and eat like normal people everywhere – this all takes place in a country that is as divided and well-armed as any.