The other side of the coin is more inspiring. Circumstances, as we know from history, can knock people flat. The victims lie there for a space; then, gradually, they stir. They rise to their feet; they get on with life -- not because government stuffs money in their pockets or mops their brows but because that's how people are, and it's wondrous to see.
We've seen it, indeed, again and again. I've always liked the old Clark Gable-Jeanette MacDonald movie "San Francisco" for what it advertises about the human spirit. An earthquake flattens Frisco. And at the end of the picture, the refugees -- the "evacuees," to use Jesse Jackson terminology -- are marching from their camp outside the city back to the city itself to pick up their lives and to rebuild.
All right, it's just a hokey old movie, but faithful in its hokey-ness to the energy and dauntlessness of human spirits never laid completely low by disaster, never given to awaiting the fatal crunch of history's wheel.
The cussedness and courage of the human race are -- rather, will be, if the partisans don't obstruct our view -- the great story of this disastrous September. Bad stuff, awful stuff, happens. We can't prevent it. What we can prevent are the anger and despair that come of cursing, rather than contending with, catastrophe.
The present need isn't for scapegoats. The need is for faith in humanity's stronger, brighter, resilient side: the side that looks at disaster and says, OK, the first thing we do now is ...