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September 6, 2005

Three Worlds

PBS really ticked me off tonight. On The News Hour, there was some insipid commentary about New Orleans being like Haiti, some Third World hellhole. The insipid - no, the disgusting - part was that the commentator seems to think that we should embrace this! Um, no. No, no, NO!

Here's the thing: New Orleans looks like the Third World today because we had a fucking huge great storm blow through. Last week. And in six months, New Orleans will once again look like the First World. In fact, it will be one of the small pockets of the First World that remains in America.

Let's review: the First World was Europe, the Second World was America, and the Third World was everybody else. The First World is where the Enlightenment went wrong, towards "systems" and "the perfecting of man" and utopian dreams ending in Revolutionary or Communist or Fascist or Socialist nightmares. The Second World is where the Enlightenment went right, towards individual freedom. The Third World is where the Enlightenment never touched, unless it was brought by British and American soldiers and administrators. And where it took root, those countries are now in, or running towards, the Second World. The Second World isn't just America any more: it's America and Eastern Europe (Vaclav Havel is the most American man this age, if his speeches are anything to go by), and Israel and Taiwan and Japan and Australia and some people in Britain and probably India.

Now, the First World sits mostly in opulent memory of past glory, sinking ever further into irrelevance. Protected by the Second World, saved more than once by the steel spines of America and Britain, the First World takes such boons as only its right due, as befits such a noble and perfected type. New Orleans is the American version of the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, or the American version of a provincial French town. New Orleans has always been the most European - the most First World - city in America. And before too long, we of the second world will put it back that way, and in a short period of time - shorter than the life of those who survived Katrina - the First Worlders of New Orleans will once again forget the world, and once again will revel in their opulence and decadence, and once again will think themselves immune to hurricanes, that by right the rest of America should protect them from.

And the First Worlders in Europe and along America's coasts will lounge around saying that New Orleans is charming and wonderful and so sophisticated. And the Third Worlders will go on thinking that, but for a little bad luck, America would be just like them, and the First Worlders will agree, oh yes.

And the rest of us? We'll go back, because New Orleans is so charmingly unreal, and has such great pubs, and is a great circus to watch for a weekend or a week. Damned shame about the mosquitos, though.

Posted by jeff at September 6, 2005 10:46 PM

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Comments

Unfortunately, as I think you imply but don't explicitly state, Canada is part of the first world.

Posted by: firsttime at September 7, 2005 6:11 PM

I think that Eastern Canada is certainly First World. Western Canada not so much. I could easily see Western Canada as part of the US, based on my time in Calgary, and some Canadians I know elsewhere.

In fact, Alberta is more like the vast center of America than is San Francisco.

Posted by: Jeff Medcalf [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 7, 2005 7:33 PM