[link|http://www.reason.com/links/links081503.shtml|How do you explain this?]

Excerpt:

Indeed, the most interesting blackout-related story is the one that never happened. The sort of pandemonium, hysteria, looting, crime, and chaos that typically greets even minor football victories as well as catastrophic utility failures simply didn't materialize. This was true even in New York City, where such antisocial behavior was once seen as part of the city's very essence. Indeed, the iconic '70s Manhattan-based sitcom Escape from New York was titled that way for a reason\ufffdone that no longer makes sense.

This Associated Press headline pretty much sums it up: One Dead, One Hurt in New York Blackout. The death toll in the country's biggest city consisted of a 40-year-old man who had a heart attack during a fire. A fireman was also seriously injured as some 60 "serious" fires were attended to during the night, which saw double the normal volume of emergency calls. "Things on balance, almost 100 percent, did work," Mayor Michael Bloomberg told the press. "New Yorkers showed that the city that burned in the 1970s when facing similar circumstances is now a very different place."

That's putting it mildly. Compare this blackout to the last great power failure in Gotham, which ushered in what then-Mayor Abe Beame understatedly referred to as a "Night of Terror". The total damage for the crime, arson, and theft associated with the '77 blackout is generally pegged at around $150 million and the mayhem that ensued (including looting and widespread muggings in broad daylight) is considered on a par or worse with what followed in the wake of the late-'60s race riots there. Yet this time around, fewer people (20) were arrested for looting than new cars were stolen in 1977 from a single Bronx Pontiac dealership (50). (That thieves would stoop to stealing Pontiacs is a sign of how crazy the times actually were.)

I say:

The inhabitants of Baghdad would do well to take note of how well we handle it when it happens to us. Oh, and the power's back up already in a lot of places. What's different between NYC and Baghdad to account for that? Could it be the saboteurs?

But why no looting and chaos? Why New Yorkers - of all people - chipping in and helping each other in a time of crisis? here's my theory: 9/11 woke us all up and brought out the best in us. Which, in foreign policy, includes some of what the whiny Left would call the worst of us. The closer you are to the epicenter, the more of an effect it has, unless you're completely beyond thinking and feeling (like Raines and Sulzberger) in which case nothing will affect you. New Yorkers, long justly vilified as rude, heartless and self-centerred, are now utterly different. Most of the rest of the country is also awakened, to a lesser degree, but then they didn't need it as badly. Those celebrities in Hollywood haven't grasped this, and that's why they now look more out of sync than ever. Likewise CNN. The French policymakers haven't grasped this, and it's already starting to hurt them in the pocketbook. And the academic Left is utterly at a loss.

Anyway, that's my theory. What's yours?