So...a lot of Trumpers and Trump sympathetic people are really against foreign aid. They were before the election, saying "why are we spending so much overseas when people at home need help?" And I still see people say stuff like that. They're especially cheering on Elon with his cuts to USAID. So, I just wanted to briefly discuss why we should support programs like USAID from a more "America First" perspective.
First of all, let's be frank, we don't spend that much on foreign aid. We spent around $70 billion a year prior to the current administration. The biggest jump from that came from Ukraine. This isn't a huge amount. if we gave that amount back to people as UBI, every adult would get like $290. Which isn't nothing, but it isn't a lot either. So why should we be willing to pay for that stuff?
Well first, let's start Ukraine. Ukraine is a western democracy. Russia is a geopolitical threat to Europe. They've been our geopolitical adversary since at least 1945, with maybe briefly a break in the 1990s when it looked like they might become democratic like the rest of Europe. Then Putin took over, broke democracy, and it backslid into a de facto dictatorship. What the US is doing today is eerily similar to what happened then.
But as you know, we dont want that. We like democracy. We like freedom. And we should have an investment in protecting democracies. NATO was founded on the idea that an attack on one is an attack on all, in order to prevent aggression, and while Ukraine isn't NATO, it is a fellow liberal democracy under attack from an authoritarian adversary who invaded them for literally no legitimate reason other than a raw land grab. We want to discourage this behavior in the modern world as this is how we start world wars. A few billion, or even a few tens of billions a year is a small investment to punish and potentially bankrupt one of our biggest adversaries.
Beyond that, let's think about why else we would give aid to people. In a lot of ways, it's soft power, something that the current trump administration doesn't understand, as he too has this putin/hitleresque lebenstraum style imperialist idea of foreign policy. Here's the thing. Hard power is nice push comes to shove, but what's better than having the biggest stick is never having to wield it. You give these other countries a few billion a year, and they'll never turn against you. You give them nothing, and china or russia might be able to court them to their side. By helping these other countries in small ways, we sway them to our side. We stop them from wanting to attack us or mess with us, because they're not gonna bite the hand that feeds them. Again, it's soft power. If we're providing humanitarian aid to other countries like say, food, why would they attack us? The aid becomes an incentive structure to ensure that they remain friendly, since if it does not, we can cut it off. We say we'd never weaponize that, but let's face it, of course we would, push comes to shove. But yeah. it's better basically to buy the rest of the world off than try to control them through threats and force like trump is. Trump is F-ing around and we're gonna find out the consequences of that with a far less stable world if we keep it up.
Beyond that, let's face it, a lot of that aid...actually does come back around and help us. I saw a story recently that Elon ended up firing the people working on keeping ebola under wraps. Um...you know, the disease that makes you fricking start bleeding out as your flesh is ripped apart from the inside? Yeah, kinda important we control that. But if we no longer provide aid to do that, that disease could spread and come here. Remember how COVID originated from china and then EVERYONE eventually got it in some form? Yeah. That can happen at any time. And a lot of what we do is aimed at preventing disease. We keep hearing about condoms to gaza. I think it was condoms to africa. Gee, why would we provide condoms to africa? Um...because otherwise AIDS spreads like wildfire there? You know, that really really bad disease that is really expensive to treat, not really curable outside of a couple studies that never seemed to go to market, and in the 1980s and 1990s was a literal death sentence? Yeah! That AIDS! Of course, much like with the 1980s and Reagan, maybe the fundies dont care because hurr durr shouldnt have had sex, but for those of us in REALITY, well...yeah, we kinda wanna keep that under control. So yeah...maybe we should give Africans condoms? And mosquito nets to prevent malaria? Ya know? If we don't that can come around to bite us bad.
Like, this is the problem with right wingers. They dont think systematically. As we saw with the christian worldview, their entire worldview is based on individual action and responsibility. But in the real world, that doesn't work. Sometimes you need to be a little collectivist to actually get good results. you NEED to engineer society. You NEED to spend money on things that in a vacuum dont make much sense in order to do a lot of good. And honestly, most foreign aid is worth the investment. It stops the rest of the world from taking up arms against us for one, and for two, it aims to control the spread of a lot of diseases and other crises that could really spread and bite us in the butt.
Again, I know that on paper it's like "shouldnt we spend this money at home?" But yeah. You look at the big picture and by doing foreign aid, we make our home safer. We limit wars. We control the spread of disease.
Like really. These guys in the Trump administration, between cutting foreign aid and RFK being our new health secretary are practically BEGGING for a second COVID style pandemic here. They are so dumb. So dangerously dumb. And I'm not even getting into RFK basically letting measles spread like wildfire. Like wtf. We are in hell. Wtf did you do America?
Ugh. I know I sound like one of those overly intelligent, condescending, snarky liberals who people hate, but I kinda have to here. This is completely and utterly ####ed up. Like...all these functions government does, they're important, we do them for a reason. There isn't that much waste to cut. What there's a lot of is ignorance about what are tax dollars are actually going for and why they're going for that stuff.
There's a reason I stopped being a conservative. Once I got past my dunning kruger syndrome "peak of mount stupid" years I kinda realized that government does things...important things, and if anything if it did even more our lives would be even better. So...when you criticize the government not doing enough for you, actually criticize the government not doing enough for you and don't advocate for cutting a bunch of stuff that actually use valid purposes while not saving that much money.
No comments:
Post a Comment