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Scott-featured global health philanthropist and activist John Green made a video about TB treatment and USAID. tl;dw, TB is the brick-shithouse of bacteria, so treatment takes 4-6 months, but the good news is that people mostly aren't contagious during treatment. Stopping treatment increases the risk of treatment-resistance, including the spread of newly-treatment-resistant strains, so interruptions in the supply chain are a major global health problem. Yes, it's bad that global health was overly reliant on the USA, but it requires government-level funding and logistics. (Unsaid, his family pledged $1m/year 2024-2027 for a USAID TB program in the Philippines, in addition to $6.5m for Partners in Health, so he's literally put his money where his mouth is.) His contacts in confirm that drug supplies are being interrupted.
Even if one wants to cut USAID, a stop-work order, rather than a phase-out, was likely a net-negative by most measures of utility.
Seventy years pro-life activists have called their opponents baby-killers and it did not swerve their opposition's resolve by one inch.
Conservatives, particularly MAGA conservatives, must harden their hearts as such. In the coming months and years, there will be no end to the wailing. They will beg you in the name that all that is decent and humane to give them the one exception and save many lives. The rationalist crowd will come to you with spreadsheets and lives per dollar and give logical arguments to save lives. You will be constantly bombarded with propaganda designed to psyop you to support the return of the old status quo.
Put on your biggest smile and say no. That's your cross to bear. Resist the temptation to give in, and to be seen as 'one of the good ones'. Mercy and compassion are the luxuries of the victor, and you have not won yet. This is but the first of many battles in a long war. If your opponents say that your proposals will cost millions of lives, say to them: "Billions." And do what you intended to do, and do it so throughly and completely that it does not have to be done again. Embrace the virtue of Lycurgus and destroy what you must to save what you can.
I see this somewhat regularly and I really dislike this style of comment, written like a Roman general giving a speech to the senate.
On a surface level, get a grip! You aren’t fighting a war. Most anybody here engages with politics to is to squabble on the internet and maybe vote.
On a deeper level, I think it really reflects a polarized view. The battle-lines are drawn, and you’re rallying for a cause. But in reality these issues are often not as polarized in the public as you might think. There is room between ‘change nothing’ and ‘blow it all up’.
You flatter me. I have a sophist's love of rhetoric: but if politics is serious - if it is about human life - then it should be taken seriously. I find it less moral to equivocate, to pretend that there is a difference between 'save some lives' and 'save all'. Removing the room for argument is the only way to reduce the size of government otherwise you are merely a ratchet on Leviathan's appetite.
‘Removing the room for argument’
That’s already been done. I don’t know all the details, but Trump seems to have direct authority over USAID. In theory, he/DOGE could take even a cursory look at what programs they fund and make some decisions from a rational basis. But it doesn’t seem like they have a real methodology, it’s just ‘XYZ is corrupted by the woke left, burn it all down’.
I’m fine with making things more efficient, when it comes to aid programs, grants, and regulations, I want people to be arguing over the merits. What I don’t want is for it to be all-or-nothing situation. It doesn’t have to be that way, it would be better if it wasn’t, and I simply don’t agree with your framing.
How was it supposed to be a slam-dunk? You know that USAID refused to cooperate with an audit, and the only reason we know any of this, is from who started complaining when they lost their funding.
There are some psy-ops to this effect, but I'm yet to see anyone express this sentiment organically.
Aren’t USAID programs and their funding all a part of the public record? The websites not working, but I believe you could previously just search stuff up.
So, Mike Benz has been doing a victory lap over USAID. He did this Joe Rogan episode like a year ago before it was in the spotlight, and he's been slowly plodding along over the last who knows how long with his own dinky little podcast or substack or whatever.
To say his profile has exploded is an understatement.
But the thing listening to Mike Benz makes clear, is none of this is as simple as reading the public records. I might only be able to summarize the shenanigans with lots of they, like we know who they are. Mike Benz dives into memos, NGOs, executives, revolving doors between organizations, etc, etc. And somehow, when you stop summarizing everything with they like you are talking about a secret cult, and start naming names and citing specific policy directives, it sounds even more schizophrenic.
Because none of this shit has "Destabilize Hungary" in the memo field of the check. It has nice sounding things like funding the arts, or health, or "training". But then it turns out absolutely all of it actually goes towards people critical of Victor Orban, and attempting to change the culture out from under him such that his positions are unthinkably evil.
"Politics is downstream of culture" often gets attributed to Andrew Breitbart. But it turns out the CIA and USAID have been playing that game longer than Andrew was even alive, including in our own country.
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