Where I disagree with Freak-Z is in taking it personal. I don't care if other countries hate us. But then again, I'm not an American, so perhaps it's easy for me to say. My point is nothing is changing. It's now been 50+ years of foreign aid in some cases and the amount of "progress" compared to the expense should be a crime against humanity. Again...the tiny number of nations that use foreign aid responsibly to help themselves attain something better compared to the vast majority of abusers only proves to me that foreign aid...well, you get the picture
But that's the emotional blackmail of our "democratic" (*chortle*) system. All the supporters of foreign aid need do is show that some village in some country no one knows anything about would have been destroyed if not for our shipment of grain and it somehow justifies the utter tragedy of wasting untold billions while our nation crawls on it's belly trying to prevent it's own economic collapse. We all buckle under the image of a starving child. We're extorted to an embarrassing degree by some poor person asking for help. If even one person is saved, somehow that emotionally justifies the flagrant squander of billions of dollars. Wishful thinking for a non-existent utopia at it's worst.
The real tragedy of all this is that we can no longer afford it. I wonder, once our democratic nations go bankrupt, how much help are we going to be to anyone else? And I wonder, with the atrociously ineffective aid we give, how would our aid be rated if any of those countries could poll their own people? I shudder to think of the answers.
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