The chant of countless grade school children in protest to cleaning up a few markers left strewn about by a classmate, or food crumbs left on the table by a sibling. The chant that also rings out from many politicians mouths around the globe, only the mess in this context could expand as far as the 'projects' of the United States to starvation and widespread disease in third world countries.
As Americans, we have heard the terms equality, equal rights since kindergarten. Because they are so ingrained in our brains through our education it is easy to take them at face value and not consider the application of those terms outside of our nations borders.
Is it because those people in poorer countries were not fortunate enough to be born into U.S. citizenship that they do not deserve the same 'equality' we expect here? There is a gross inequality amongst standards of living within countries and between them. Those who enjoy a greater standard of living refuse to make an effort to assist those that do not, because "it is not their problem."
"Those other countries governments should learn how to get their own stuff together"
"Why don't they improve working conditions for their people?"
As Americans we are also raised to believe that our country, "The land of the free and the home of the brave", is righteous, even a godsend to 'lesser' countries; offering aid (mostly in the form of military involvement). What is kept behind the scenes offers an answer to the questions posed above.
What do you think it will take for the United States to start caring? On the list of current priorities, I do believe that the well-being of other countries should be on the top, especially since politicians urge that our country was built on Christian principles. My only concern would be how to narrow down which countries to help first and which countries to help at all. I think it is going to be a very long time, if ever, that the United States offers aid, which in my opinion is hypocritical and very disheartening.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you completely about the difficulties in prioritizing with countries need help first, that will open up a string of politicians biases and will probably result in which countries will let the U.S. reap the most benefits from the deal.And it's not even necessarily that this country was supposedly based on Christian principles, but that we boast about our standard of living. What puts me in a state of disbelief is that U.S. companies are developing things like to iPad and new versions of the iPhone for the consumer market while people in the peripheral countries don't have clean water. That innovation and technical prowess could be better put to work helping develop ways to shrink the huge gap between the rich and the poor countries around the world. It has to be a collective effort, people shouldn't feel like we are making a sacrifice, we should want to. That's the scary thing, is that people would rather have an iPad than help out another human being. In the U.S. most of us are shaded from the state of the rest of humanity unless you go searching for information.
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