That’s a good point. “You’re not the boss of me” is a founding principle of this country.

Sounds like these ladies need to bootstrap it and learn to do their own hair and makeup. Like us plebes do.

It’s about the American vision in the world. It’s SUPPOSED to be something like Star Trek - settling disputes and spreading peace and democracy around the world. Albeit there are ulterior motives, but it is an ideal. A peaceful and diverse coalition of various nationalities and creeds fighting the good fight together.…

America is one of the most Christian nations on Earth, but American Christian’s shocking indifference to core tenants of their faith astound people the world over.

Also it makes good business sense...china is making money hand over fist building roads in Africa, and with more roads, the faster goods and services will travel through the country—not to mention medicine and aid will be cheaper to provide. This is a no-brainer, which you think would appeal to the Trump crowd

I mean, if you really need a specifically selfish reason why it’s good/necessary: improving the quality of life for people in poorer countries increases global stability and therefore decreases the likelihood of you getting blown up by a disgruntled terrorist someday.

There is one messy way of getting people to join the Africa Aid train: you ask them what they’d rather have, hundreds of millions being spent on aid or hundreds of millions of Africans migrating over to (in my case) Europe.

Every now and then, I try this little experiment to try and think like a trump voter and I just can’t. Like my brain literally cannot wrap its way around being that evil and mean.

Does Trump have a single policy objective beyond “Fuck up whatever that N***** did as President?”

Thank you for saying this. I could not have stated it better.

More pragmatically, you could say, since colonialism receded in the 50s and 60s, western democracies devised ways to help these newly independent nations, but each attempt, often misguided, lead to new forms of exploitation and further financial instability of countries. Since we’ve taken so much and fucked them over…

In a more realpolitik sense, our aid to Africa is keeping our gas cheap, and us safe. China is actually starting to compete in Africa with aid, and gaining influence the same way we did during the Cold War. This influence is important, because of the huge amount of natural resources we benefit from. It is our oil…

the completely asinine part is that they know they’ll never get people to agree that if you’re too poor you should be allowed to die. So taking people off of health *insurance* but still requiring doctors to give care to the indigent just makes things MORE expensive for those with insurance. From a purely selfish…

humanitarian aid to African countries was like the ONE thing W. got right.

Plus the inability to take the long view on international security - by fostering positive international relations first.

I think that our first and foremost reason for doing things should be that we care about other people, but it also irks my pragmatic side that Trump (& Republicans in general) see no benefit to themselves in helping other people. If we invest less in Africa, who is going to step in? China.

This. I can’t explain why the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is a good thing if things like, oh, “improved life expectancy in developing countries”, “fewer orphans” and “fewer babies born with HIV” don’t sway you.

“What are we getting for all of that money? Why don’t we make them earn it? We could bring them over on boats and have them build our wall and repair our roads.”

It depends on how mad he gets when he learns this: U.S. Intelligence Officials Reportedly Warn Israeli Counterparts Against Sharing Info With Trump Administration.

But those poor, helpless Israelis. THEY need all our aid $$s.