"Disasters May Be Causing 'Compassion Fatigue'" Thats one of the headlines at Foxnews.com.

I'm facinated by the assumption that America is overwhelmed by the tradgedy of Hurricane Katrina. Sure, people are feeling ill-effects emotionally from the disaster. It was a horrible horrible thing.

But, personally, what leaves me fatigued and in absolute despair is the RESPONSE to Katrina. And I'm not talking about the physical rescue efforts.

I've made the somewhat startling discovery that a significant percentage of my friends and family, people that I love and generally respect, are liberals. I mean REALLY socially liberal. In the same way that I mean I am REALLY socially conservative.

While we generally avoid intense political discussions, its natural that we talk about such a national disaster as Katrina. Sure, we talked about 9/11 but there was an obvious target of blame there. Terrorists. Its harder to "blame" Mother Nature, or assign no blame at all. Its human nature to want to assign blame to something that we can theoretically control. It makes us feel safer. And I understand the human desperation to feel safer.

Yet. In spite of the temptation, taking complete leave of your senses is NOT the answer. For concrete examples of what it is, exactly, thats pushed me to the edge of despair lets consider my interactions with three people that are close enough to me that they'd actually WANT to speak at my funeral (not that they're wishing me dead, btw).

(1) Immediately following Katrina, I had the following exchange with a friend. "Surely we can agree that the least the people in NewOrleans could have done was to get some bottled water" "It gets hot in NewOrleans, even if they had water they'd have drank their six day supply within the first few hours" Apparently, she thinks that people lack the self-control to ration water for more than a few hours. In other words, people need the state to do EVERYTHING for them. There is NO personal responsibility at all.

(2) I also had the following exchange with a diferent friend. "Someone ought to do something. Gloria can't be expected to sacrifice her lifestyle to take care of her mother. Its not right. You know, you ought to suggest that Gloria dump her mother on one of those really big religious churches. They look after old people." This in response to the news that Gloria was taking off two weeks (JUST TWO WEEKS) to look after and potentially relocate her elderly mother. Note to World: Neither Gloria nor her mother are remotely Christian! Apparently the "someone" who "ought to do something" is anyone but the individual.

(3) I had the following exchange with my mother, who until this moment had shown no signs of dementia. Ok, a few signs but all related to loving-Clinton/hating-Bush. "So. Mom. You're saying that Bush caused (insert specific action to complicated to go into here). You do realize that happened 36 years ago, right?" "Yes! No. I didn't say that. Its all his fault though. We shouldn't be in Iraq!" You know you've lost all hope of reasonable discussion when they accuse Bush of time-travel with the intent of thwarting liberals.

Sometimes, I feel like one of those people (elves?) defending the walls of that city at Helms Deep in LOTR:TwoTowers when big wave upon wave of bad guys rushed them, like a locust plague ... stretching as far as the eye could see ... completely beyond rational thought.

I'm fatigued with the effort of trying to show them reason, of pulling them back from the brink of insanity. Ultimately, I realize that I must embrace my own ideal of personal responsibility. I have to let them go their own way. They are grown-ups that would be determined competent to stand trial in a court of law. It is their choice to abandon reason in their quest to feel better, to feel safer.

Personally, I've always been the kind that prefers being safe (which involves taking some precautions) to feeling safe (which involves sticking my head in the sand).