I’ve heard a few lefties express satisfaction with the hurricane that slammed into Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. All three are southern red states, states that went for Bush, and I’ve listened to few folks say it serves `em right, fuck `em, hope there’s another hurricane comin’, blah blah blah. (For the record: No one at Stranger HQ made this argument — I heard it when I went out last night to a couple of bars.) This is cracked for two reasons.

First, these places are going to be re-built with tax dollars from blue cities (there’s no such thing as a blue state, as we argued in our Urban Archipelago issue, only blue cities that are big enough to turn otherwise red states blue). And second, the coastal areas and cities being inundated are home to many of those three state’s outnumbered, pathetically isolated Dem voters. The hurricane isn’t washing away Republicans, it’s washing away big-city and coastal Dems.

It is legit, however, to point out that if a disaster of this magnitude had struck, say, Southern California, the American Taliban would take a break from calling for assassinations and blocking the sale of the morning after pill to claim the destruction was an expression of God’s displeasure with the porn industry or Will & Grace or rollerblading. When bad things happen to the Bible Belt, tax dollars flow out of blue cities to aide the victims. When bad things happen to cities, the flow condemnation out of the Bible Belt continues apace.