by Smeevy | 2025-04-06 01:25:47+00:00
>NGO workers may not be 'mustache-twirling villains' but USAID literally is, well perhaps sans the mustache. They are actively and regularly used to destroy and/or manipulate countries while operating under the pretext of aid. Their purpose is not to help other countries, but to manipulate them.

Since the tone of our conversation has turned more reasonable, it is my hope that you can see how sweeping this generalization is. Given the amount of misinformation surrounding USAID (just check Snopes, man), I'm loath to accept this claim on its face. I reject your assertion that the world is better by destroying USAID and replacing it with nothing. This is costing lives both foreign and domestic. If I withheld promised food and medicine from starving and sick people, they would die and it would be my fault. I don't see any reasonable conclusion otherwise. You can try to argue otherwise, but I would refuse to endorse such vile callousness.

>What I'm saying about sustainability is not some outside angle. Look at most of any effective charity doing work in impoverished places and it's always about sustainability. In the most typical example you don't simply give water to people - instead you encourage, and if necessary - assist, them in building wells. Charity will eventually run out for one reason or another, and when your entire system has been built with no focus on sustainability you can create catastrophic scenarios.

I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I'm not seeing your point here. You're advocating for a "correct" kind of assistance and the world just doesn't work that way. There's many different kinds of charity and assistance and they all serve different purposes, so your argument is just simplifying a complex interplay of variables to a single equation.

I applaud the long-term strategic view you are espousing, but you appear to be falling into the trap of assuming that all of these problems actually have solutions. We can wax poetic about teaching a man to fish, but that man is going to die if we don't give him a damn fish first. The clean, elegant solutions to global problems you're alluding to aren't being implemented because they're difficult and fraught with peril. This is going to be a little offensive, but do you honestly believe that no one else thought of trying to make these beneficiaries self-sufficient? It's hard and people were (and are) trying.

Regarding a point system about political malfeasance, why not? If we're going to engage in relativism, we should at least know how they stack up relatively rather than waving our hands and saying "everybody sucks." It's irresponsible and intellectually lazy.

Also, if you can list a single Democrat misdeed on par with January 6, delaying Supreme Court appointments, or abdicating the power of the purse then please do. Just one. Anything. The catch here is that is has to have actually happened. It can't be some slopped-up "they wanted to do this" or unrealized conspiracy. It has to have actually happened in America on Earth within the last 3 decades.

After that, I'm okay with counting as well. We all need to keep track of how power is applied with neither tribalism nor nihilism.