{"id":134566,"date":"2017-09-06T11:24:27","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=134566"},"modified":"2017-09-06T15:45:25","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T21:45:25","slug":"americans-want-heroes-not-care-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/06\/americans-want-heroes-not-care-workers.html","title":{"rendered":"Americans want to be heroes, not care workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting article on an interesting observation: Americans go gangbusters to help in an emergency — throwing donations, giving blood, doing the heavy lifting to help people in crisis survive. Heroic stuff, absolutely necessary, highly laudable.<\/p>\n

But when it comes to the proactive steps needed to keep emergencies from happening … welllllll, not so much. Regular donations to disaster relief organizations, vs one-off checks … encouraging zoning laws, rather than dealing with the floods or fires that result when they’re ignored … eating healthy, instead of just getting cardiac surgery when our arteries clog up … taking steps to help prevent homelessness, rather than dealing with the homeless when a winter cold snap threatens lives … maintaining bridges, as opposed to building new ones …<\/p>\n

… we all love the beau geste,<\/i> the heroic response, the one-off effort that takes care of the particular acute<\/b> problem we face. That’s a lot more fun (or a lot less drudgery) than dealing with chronic<\/b> early-stage problems that are preventable or can be managed or paid for (even if more efficiently) on a drudging, day-to-day basis.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen this over and over in volunteer organizations: if there’s an emergency, a crisis, something huge, people step up to save the day. But try to get them to step up for just the normal ongoing grunt work? You can hear the crickets chirping.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if it’s a particularly American quirk, or a human one. It’s not efficient or effective. But it’s how we do things.<\/p>\n


\n
\n<\/a>
\nHow Americans View Natural Disasters<\/a><\/span>
\nStephanie Zvan introduced me to Minnesota activist Sigrid Ellis, who put out a series of tweets that are really spot-on. I\u2019d never thought about this before, but she\u2019s absolutely right. Americans love to help when disaster hits \u2014 and that\u2019s great \u2014 but we don\u2019t want to do the hard work to help in the \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting article on an interesting observation: Americans go gangbusters to help in an emergency — throwing donations, giving blood, doing the heavy lifting to help people in crisis survive. Heroic stuff, absolutely necessary, highly laudable. But when it comes to the proactive steps needed to keep emergencies from happening … welllllll, not so much. … Continue reading “Americans want to be heroes, not care workers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,748,17,380,358,385,376],"tags":[1117,709],"class_list":["post-134566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plusposts","category-weather-and-climate-change","category-homeland-security","category-nationalism-exceptionalism","category-poor-citizenship","category-safety","category-taxing-spending","tag-america","tag-disaster"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/heroes.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":30919,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/29\/dealing-with-disaster.html","url_meta":{"origin":134566,"position":0},"title":"Dealing with Disaster","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 29-Oct-12 7:59am","format":false,"excerpt":"While I'm sure that the GOP will be watching eagerly to jump on any mistake that the Obama Administration makes in dealing with Hurricane Sandy and its impact on the NE US, I hope at least some attention is paid to the basic, philosophical differences over what role, if any,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6732,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/11\/if_it_makes_a_d.html","url_meta":{"origin":134566,"position":1},"title":"If it makes a difference to you …","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 11-Jan-05 11:04am","format":false,"excerpt":"... the tax code has been tweaked this year to let you claim on 2004 taxes any donations made to a tsunami relief organization up until 31 January 2005. Or...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12200,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/10\/23\/fire_again.html","url_meta":{"origin":134566,"position":2},"title":"Fire! (Again!)","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 23-Oct-07 1:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Mary writes to let us know that she's safe (the Harris Fire is closest to her, but she's not in the fire's path and it's still some distance).\u00a0 Her dad's...","rel":"","context":"In "Climate Change \/ Weather \/ Disasters"","block_context":{"text":"Climate Change \/ Weather \/ Disasters","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science\/weather-and-climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6795,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/12\/29\/and_on_a_non_co.html","url_meta":{"origin":134566,"position":3},"title":"And on a non-commercial note …","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 29-Dec-04 11:57pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Amazon.com is hosting a donation page (through their \"Honor System\" mechanism) to collect money for the American Red Cross in disaster relief efforts for the tsunami victims. Unlike usual Honor...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":45643,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/03\/the-multi-media-political-bombardment.html","url_meta":{"origin":134566,"position":4},"title":"The Multi-Media Political Bombardment","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 3-Oct-14 1:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm a registered Democrat, so I get emails. Lots of emails. Emails begging, threatening, then begging again for donations to the electoral cause.But I also follow along some odd Right-wing newsletters (great source material), I end up getting very, very similar emails from various Republican groups, also begging, threatening, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12187,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/10\/28\/california_fire_victim_as.html","url_meta":{"origin":134566,"position":5},"title":"California Fire Victim Assistance","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 28-Oct-07 3:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The immediate crisis in California from the wildfires is largely dealt with, but there's much to be done to help folks who've lost their houses, and are trying to pick...","rel":"","context":"In "Climate Change \/ Weather \/ Disasters"","block_context":{"text":"Climate Change \/ Weather \/ Disasters","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science\/weather-and-climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134570,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134566\/revisions\/134570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}