Friday, January 07, 2005
Disaster relief
A friend has touched on this on her blog, and I, too, have found it interesting how so much generosity and motivation can be gathered to help those affected by natural disasters but so little for so many other worthy causes, even some that would cost much less to make a significant impact. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to see how much money has poured in to relief efforts worldwide, but I thought Nicholas Kristof made some good points in his syndicated column, so I highly recommend reading it.
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Hooray for Mr. Kristof having the cajones to say something that will surely bring defensive tirades from his readership (*all* of whom surely donate far more than the national average to charitable causes). He mentions children in Africa in need of effective anti-malarial medication and a grandmother torn apart by the decision of which of her six kids gets to sleep under the life-saving mosquito net, even touches upon solutions that would get to the roots of the problem through education and systemic change. I was with him almost the whole way, making gentle approving noises and plans to bear his children, until I got to the following line:
"With America's image tarnished around the world, one of the most effective steps Mr. Bush could take to revive it would be to lead a global effort to confront an ongoing challenge like malaria."
(Sound of head repeatedly hitting wall, accompanied by frustrated sobbing...)WHY DOES IT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE ABOUT HOW WE LOOK? Why can't we just flipping help people because THEY are people and WE are people and we are all in this together and it is just not FAIR that we have the luxury of deciding which worthy cause is going to get our token 10 bucks this Christmas? This is not about our fricking public image, people, it is about we have the resources to stop people DYING everyday and we would rather buy soda pop and designer labels (don't get me started on sweat shops).
OK, I guess if we INSIST on making everything be about public image, this is one good argument that the public can understand. But why can't we have capitalism AND 'democracy' AND ethics?
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