I’m still surprised by the number of times I hear about what a stupid place New Orleans is to have a city. Even more, it seems a little bizarre that these people I’ve just met still seem so eager to tell someone from New Orleans their opinion on this. It seems a little cruel to want to kick us like that when we’re down, but I think I understand it.

There is always a tendency to blame the victim in situations like this. The “stupid city” accusation is the macro version of the “you were asking for it, look how you were dressed” judgment after a sexual assault. It’s a grotesquely dishonest kind of reasoning, implying that if there is any chink in your moral armor, then the horrifying thing that happened to you is exactly what you deserve. It doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory reflection.

But it works really really well if the only point is to turn the page, because everyone does have chinks in their moral armor. In paper I gave in the spring I called this “narrative anaesthesia,” a desire to recount stories in a dishonest manner in order to minimize discomfort. In the case of New Orleans, the discomfort comes from the fact that everyone is a aware of the suffering, and they also instinctively feel implicated in it. But those who cannot handle the moral claim that makes on them have an overwhelming desire to make it go away by retelling the story with the victim recast as stupid and thus deserving of the suffering.

New Orleans certainly has chinks in its moral armor, so it is a very easy city to dismiss in this fashion. There is notorious corruption and excessive poverty (and quite a few “blame the victim” storytellers on that point, let me tell you), and much of the city is in fact below sea level.

But the “stupid city” dodge is not only intellectually dishonest, it’s actually wrong. I’ve argued at length that New Orleans is not only not a stupid place to have a city, but that the decision to grow a city here was one of the all-time great decisions this country has ever made. (Incidentally, I’ve not yet heard anyone from elsewhere say: “it’s a stupid place that we decided to put a city.” It’s not as though it was just a local decision.) Nor is it all that difficult of a city to protect, not that we’re doing that either.

But if the only goal is to turn the page, then "stupid city" will do the trick. It's okay that it doesn't stand up to scrutiny if the whole point is to avoid it.