A co-worker today was telling everyone to send non-perishable food items and hygiene products to the Salvation Army, and they'll get them to Haiti, for the relief effort.
It's truly terrible, what has happened there; it's always terrible, when disaster strikes anywhere, but especially a Third World country, which can't fend for itself, anyway.
This situation brought to mind a blog article I wrote years ago, about Africa, an entire continent of "Haitis", which is unendingly mired in war, oppression, poverty, disease, suffering and misery.
When I wrote the article, yet another Epic Disaster of some type or another was aflicting the Dark Conitinent, and we were, yet again, sending aid.
We, along with nearly every other "civilized" nation, send billions every year, in monetary aid to bolster economies, and in emergency and humanitarian supplies, medicines and food, to help the people.
My question was, when will we ever see a return on our investment?
When will they begin to use our supplies and money to pull things together, at long, long last, and drag Africa out of its dank, smelly swamp of misery?
Many, many tons of these supplies, and much of the money, of course, never reach where they're needed, because they're confiscated and/or picked over by warlords, military, and corrupt officials; therefore, much of what we do send essentially goes to waste.
Someone posted on that blog; that was how they lived, and that was what they were used to, and that we should just repsect that.
I consider that post, to this day, to be one of the most asinine statements I've ever read.
So, this person was saying, pretty much, they WANT to live that way? They LIKE it? How stupid is that, factual or not?
I mean; why would anyone want to be able to leave their comfy house, with its shower and toilet, get into their car and go to the store, where they have the opportunity buy almost any item of food or clothing they desire?
Why would they ever want to be able to do that, when they can just starve, filthy and half-naked, in a shack or mud hut, urinating and defecating, if they're lucky, in a bucket, walking to a slimy, diseased mudhole three miles away, to use as a community bathtub?
How could anyone ever want anything better for themselves and/or their families?
It's mushy-headed, goofball liberal thinking like that, which keeps these people mired in the misery they suffer. Not every aspect of every culture must be unquestioningly respected.
Of course, given the fact that, despite decades of humanitarian aid and monies untold, little to nothing has changed.
Maybe they do like it; in which case, perhaps we really should just stop sending help. Maybe they don't want it?
Africa, indeed, the entire Third World, is, or has become, essentially, one giant government housing project; endless cycles of poverty, violence, and social dysfunction.
The warlords and military juntas are the gangs and criminals which rule the Projects, keeping the people in fear.
There's no need for the people to try to better themselves or their situation, however, because they know there's always aid coming from somewhere. They'll just find another aid station or refugee camp; it works just like Welfare, and it more or less represents the same type of trap.
Same with Haiti, really; corruption, poverty, despair and misery, funded by unending flows of cash and aid, which only bolsters the corruption, poverty, despair and misery, because there's no incentive to break the cycle.
Their Marxist dictator, Preval, seems more conerned about earthquake damage done to his two palaces, rather than to his populace. No surprise there; after all, he's a Marxist dictator. Comes with the title.
Besides, corruption, poverty, despair and misery go hand-in-hand with Marxism.
Now...I know I'm gonna take it hard on the chin for this one, but...
anthropologists tell us that Africa is where the first apes stood and walked erect, eventually becoming Home Sapiens. That was...what? Maybe 1.5-2 million years back?
That means, looking at the bottom line, that Africa has had around 2 million years to get its crap together.
Looked at from this perspective, it should be the most advanced, properous continent on the entire planet. It is not.
Instead, it remains, perennially, the most fragmented, chaotic and backward; many of it's people still live as their ancestors did, millennia ago.
Maybe the early proto-humans looked around, correctly figured it for a hellhole, and took off for greener pastures, eventually forming thriving, cohesive civilizations elsewhere, and leaving Africa to become the cesspool it is today.
Now, for any humorless liberals reading this, that last thought was intended as sarcasm; well, kind of.
However, I don't feel too sorry for them, or any Third Worlders, anymore, including, yes, the Haitians.
Corruption, disease, poverty; there is a solution to all these things: freedom. That, and the motivation to obtain that freedom.
Stop helping them be poor; give them the tools, and a reason, to learn to fend for themselves.
There just comes a time--barring aid for actual, natural disasters, of course--to cut off the tap.
After all, "give a man a fish....."
...and he'll just keep coming back for more fish.