Second, when I say a name of a country does something, I am referring to the government of that country. It would obviously be retarded to say that everyone in the country is stupid. It’s even hard to say that the majority of non-represented populations are stupid. But I can say without the doubt the government of lots of countries are stupid.

Third, my point was that I was always fed a lot of “self-hate” lines in my youth and I now believe that most it was bullshit. Stuff about how bad America is and how lots of poorer countries deserve better simply isn’t correct in my opinion. It’s more like poorer countries just have horrible governments and a lot of those countries would be poor and fucked up no matter what. The aid thing was merely saying that America does cause some problems but the problems mostly lie within those countries.

The participation levels (ie, saturation, not necessarily amounts) of corruption in the first-world are way less than poorer countries. Obviously corruption happens everywhere but it’s all relative. Although, most corruption in the richer countries is thinly disguised as political contributions or lobbying so it can be hard to classify.

Do you realize how naive you sound when you say, “I visited Africa this summer and now I realize the root cause of their problems and why don’t all these people who have spent their lives studying the subject understand that aid = corruption = poverty”?

I’m sure there’s some truth to what you say, but I’m also sure the issue is a lot more complicated that you presume. What does it mean to say, “these poorer countries do it to themselves”? You set it up as an either/or, rich countries or poor countries, but it sounds like what you’re really critical of are the GOVERNMENTS of (some) poor countries. For one thing, as I think you realize, those governments are often not particularly representative of or accountable to the majority of the population, so I don’t know if it’s fair to say “they do it to themselves” as though the whole country were to blame. Also, in many cases corrupt leaders are themselves remnants of colonialism/neocolonialsm, so again, not an either/or there.

Oh, and to be fair, there’s obviously plenty of corruption and bad decision-making in the governments of richer countries.

I would invite you to read The Bangkok Post but your head might explode.

Bill