It's one thing to be horrified by the suffering in New Orleans and send off a check to the Red Cross (Americans are not ungenerous, especially in a crisis), but quite another to recognize that many of the causes of the catastrophe — the existence of a huge permanent underclass, the ongoing degradation of our coastlines, the choice to cut taxes rather than maintain our nation's infrastructure — are a widely accepted part of life in today's United States. They've become normal.