Post AzqJv1OVAFdrmRI2XQ by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
 (DIR) More posts by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
 (DIR) Post #AzqJuzp10hf6u5gBaS by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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       Adding to my list of things that don't make sense.Most days I make the effort to try and understand the world better. And try to better understand humans. Today I had lunch with a nice fella who is very much a humanitarian and very generous, and yet is a big fan of "what Trump is doing".It's a wild ride. I'll call him Cam. Not his real name.Cam has made a lot of money in the construction business in Florida, and as a professional dentist. He and his wife have raised several of their own kids, and adopted a few more. All have been through university. He  now spends most of his time in Nepal helping a remote community access education and health care. He taps into various networks of charitable donors to bring money to Nepal, and enable these programs that transform the lives of some of the poorest communities you could imagine.Flip side, he thinks Trump is doing a great job to tackle the waste and corruption that sucks up tax payer dollars. He says there is some "collateral damage" in the process, but sometimes you have to start over and rebuild to make progress. He thinks socialised health care is wasteful and ineffective and one step closer to communism. He is happy to see the SNAP program shutdown because too many people are rorting it. He also made a comment about how God blessed his life and he's doing his best to share his good fortune.Yikes./1
       
 (DIR) Post #AzqJv0hbjjKZdPDmgC by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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       I don't think I'll ever understand folks who think any kind of social safety net is bad (because people will scam the system) but somehow corporations can always be trusted to deliver the best results.If ever there is a cohort in western society that is guaranteed to rip off the govt, it's corporations. I would argue that anyone who worries about people "being held accountable" can hardly point to Trump as their example of quality leadership.Obvious Cam doesn't see it that way. He sees Trump as unfairly accused of stuff. Maybe the real clue is his reference to "God". I think it takes remarkable cognitive dissonance to be angry at poor people getting food stamps, while at the same time deciding to privately fund raise for hospitals in the Himalayas because you don't trust the govts there to spend the money wisely.And for sure, lots of govts are corrupt. Have you seen what's happening in the White House lately???/2
       
 (DIR) Post #AzqJv1OVAFdrmRI2XQ by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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       Help me to understand this kind of person.Please don't be abusive and angry. I genuinely want to understand how someone can see the need in poor communities overseas, while voting to punish the working poor back home. Someone who is giving his time and money, and pretty much devoting his life now towards helping a specific community overseas. He's a nice person. He's intelligent. He's very positive. What am I missing here?Is this purely a case of someone who has lived a life of privilege and power, and for most of their lives held a distrust for helping the poor... until he finds some brown people in a struggling country?/3
       
 (DIR) Post #AzqJv1mxhJCx0IjZfE by TerryHancock@realsocial.life
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       @ewenNot sure if this applies to "Cam", but one dynamic to be aware of:Offering charity is a means of establishing dominance. You show your social/status superiority over those you help.Far away, foreign, underpriviledged people are safe, abstract objects for such impulses, without having the threat of interacting, or of bringing the objects up to parity where they become competition (and subjects).I've seen this "disrespectful charity" behavior even in otherwise quite liberal people.