The USA pulled food and medical aid from starving people. They are dying right now."How can people be so heartlessHow can people be so cruel
Easy to be proud, easy to say no
Easy to be cold, easy to say no"
"Easy to be Hard," from the rock musical "Hair," 1967. A hit by Three Dog Night, 1969
Trump was sending a message. His would be a can-do presidency. He would cut waste, especially in programs beloved by the 'do-gooder" types. America first.
This week's The New Yorker ran a story about the consequences of the abrupt end of USAID's programs. The article reported that 600,000 people have died so far this year. The article links to a dashboard counter. That is 88 people per hour.
The New Yorker article comes during a week with a strange confluence of events.
-- Supplemental Nutrition Aid to Americans is suspended. Two-thirds of SNAP benefits go to households with children, and 39 percent of SNAP benefits go to children.
-- The U.S. government is in shutdown. Democrats are holding out for restoration of the subsidies to health insurance for the working poor.
Meanwhile:
-- President Trump held a Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-Lago. F. Scott Fitzgerald's book described the flamboyant, careless behavior of the wealthy and fashionable set during the last years of "Roaring Twenties" prosperity. It is good to be rich.
The party was intentional. Trump understands the optics. There is no need to apologize for being rich, really rich. Or to be really rich among people who are poor.
We are watching a famine and have capacity to reverse some of the suffering, but we are not. This puts us in the company of 20th Century mass murderers: with Mao Zedong, with his Great Leap Forward; with Joseph Stalin's starvation of Ukrainians; and with Adolph Hitler's Holocaust.
Donald Trump has an understanding of the world that serves as ideology: The world is a place of constant struggle. The push and pulls of transactions -- deals -- reflect the power of each participant. It is a dog-eat-dog world. The powerful take what they can. "Honor" is a sham that holds one back from maximizing a deal. If you can stiff vendors, do so. Only saps leave money on the table.
In this worldview, there are rules in place because powerful people put them there. Laws and norms are a reflection of power, not virtue or wisdom. That power was transitory and situational, and may reflect a power equilibrium no longer in place. Trump willfully breaks laws and moral codes to test them. If they give way, then those boundaries were out of date and didn't reflect Trump's current power.
And what about the people trampled in this winner-take-all struggle? What about the sick, the hungry, the naked, the poor? What about those people Jesus talked about?
They are losers. Empathy is weakness. You don't owe anybody anything. Take what you can and enjoy it guiltlessly. American Christians felt aggrieved because they were no longer considered special, the favored and default group. Trump is working to put them back in their rightful place, on top.
Life is struggle, and Trump is on the side of Christians, and that is what counts.
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]
14 comments:
From 2001 to 2024, USAID had an average budget of $23 billion a year and saved a yearly estimated range of between 4.1 and 4.7 million lives. Trump and his malevolent sycophants have shut that down. What they are continuing to provide every year is the billions in aid we give to Israel, helping finance the slaughter of over 69,000 Palestinians.
The thing that bothers me the most is where is the outcry from the pro life crowd that thinks abortion is so horrible because God gave us life. Why doesn’t starving, dying kids and adults count? It makes me think it isn’t really the life that matters, it’s keeping women under control that really matters. It’s more evidence that Americans are no longer the good guys, maybe in fact we are the bad guys.
Wow, you are finally looking a bit beyond tariffs and FI (fake intelligence). No one wants to see kids hungry, but fortunately many poor kids are fed at school. And they have teachers and staff monitoring their well being to some extent.
But what about poor and disabled adults and seniors? They need to eat also. Many of them are isolated without the ability to drive to a food bank or hobble over to a distant food pantry and stand in line.
YOU could do a MUCH better job bringing awareness to this issue instead of harping on tariffs during a national food crisis and outright war on the poor and needy in the USA. Let them eat nothing.
More spitballs from the back of the room. If you want to be a scold then get off your butt by writing a guest post telling the truth as you see it. Express YOUR priorities. Since you are so holier-than-thou., And please send me copies of receipts from the donations you have made to address hunger in the area, so I can see that you put your money where your mouth is. You upbraided me a week ago for writing about something that didn't interest you You think tariffs don't matter? They are a sales tax on poor people especially. You are ok with that??? You have an offer on the table to write a post that reflects your priorities. Instead you wrote a comment complaining about someone who wrote about what you wanted -- just not exactly right. Children, not disabled adults. Get off you butt if you want to be taken seriously.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
- Charles Dickens
The wealth disparity in the U.S. is obscene. It's an issue Peter has addressed. How about you?
Precisely $3.8 Billion per year.
“This puts us in the company of 20th Century mass murderers: with Mao Zedong, with his Great Leap Forward; with Joseph Stalin’s starvation of Ukrainians; and with Adolph [sic] Hitler’s Holocaust”.
No, it doesn’t. No need for hyperbole where Trump’s callous recklessness is concerned, even assuming the “Deaths caused by” numbers are accurate. Slashing foreign charity is not comparable to herding folks into gas chambers, nor even to taking people’s food away from them.
But inflation is down! 'We are the victors on affordability'. Gas will go to $2.
Surely you believe in magical thinking?
Peter said:
We are watching a famine and have capacity to reverse some of the suffering, but we are not. This puts us in the company of 20th Century mass murderers: with Mao Zedong, with his Great Leap Forward; with Joseph Stalin's starvation of Ukrainians; and with Adolph Hitler's Holocaust.
No, it doesn’t. There’s a difference between purposely taking food away from people to starve them, versus they are starving for reasons that had nothing to do with us and we don’t jump in to feed them.
Not helping them isn’t kind or empathic, but it does not make us mass murderers. The commandment says, “Thou shalt not kill.” It does not say, “You are morally required to save everyone on the planet.”
We give money to Israel that is used by them to buy US-made weapons. Israel uses those weapons to keep Arabs and Persians from fulfilling their dreams of eradicating the Jewish state and slaughtering Jews.
All you have to do is look at what they did on 10/7, when they had the chance.
👍
Couldn’t have said it better myself. But I tried anyway… 😀
I did not title the post "what would David do, or what would the God oof the Old Testament do? I said what would Jesus do? Failure to act is acting.
Then he will say also to those on the left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels;
Matthew 25:42
for I was hungry, and you didn't give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink;
Matthew 25:43
I was a stranger, and you didn't take me in; naked, and you didn't clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn't visit me.'
Matthew 25:44
"Then they will also answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn't help you?'
Matthew 25:45
"Then he will answer them, saying, 'Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you didn't do it to one of the least of these, you didn't do it to me.'
Post a Comment