Third World countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria, and just about any other nation you can think of that is currently afflicted with chronic, large scale domestic terrorism issues are also riddled with corruption, maladministration and huge gulf between the rich and poor. Corruption seems to go hand in hand with poverty. But which causes the other? We all know that endemic corruption, and all the maladministration that can come along with that, can keep a country from being able to advance out of poverty. But I have another theory, I think widespread poverty may be fostering a culture of corruption. Think about where the leaders came from. They might have been born into poverty (or lived growing up with a very real fear of poverty) and later clawed their way up. They lived in survival mode and now even when they have wealth and power they are still in that mentality where they will do anything to get more personal wealth. They might have engaged in petty corruption while they were climbing up the ladder, then one thing leads to another and they have sold out any ethical values they might have once held. There's a strange paradox and that is that the more poverty that exists in a society, the less altruism that society feels towards others. While a few cases of poverty might elicit sympathy, they are just overwhelmed with all the poverty they see around them and it's easier just to shut it out. People are afraid that they themselves could fall into poverty, the visible poverty they see all around them, and they shift into more of a survival mode, self-preservation where the individual comes first. There's not much room for empathy towards others, or a sense of civic duty. This no doubt encourages corruption. People in these societies desperately want to have economic security, and will often pursue money at any cost, despite risk to themselves or morals that have to be sacrificed. This of course could lead to a perpetual cycle of poverty (theoretically), where poverty causes corruption and endemic corruption keeps the country in poverty. Of course, there are probably other factors that create the culture of corruption as well. So the question can be asked: What are these other reasons that these countries are so corrupt? Is it the people? Is it something about their culture? Their religion or values? More worryingly, if these people come to other countries are they going to bring their culture of corruption with them?
What I Learned in the Peace Corps in Africa: Trump Is Right by Karin McQuillan for the American Thinker January 2018 Three weeks after college, I flew to Senegal, West Africa, to run a community center in a rural town. Life was placid, with no danger, except to your health. That danger was considerable, because it was, in the words of the Peace Corps doctor, “a fecalized environment.” In plain English: sh(*)(*) is everywhere. People defecate on the open ground, and the feces is blown with the dust - onto you, your clothes, your food, the water. He warned us the first day of training: do not even touch water. Human feces carry parasites that bore through your skin and cause organ failure. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that a few decades later, liberals would be pushing the lie that Western civilization is no better than a third-world country. Or would teach two generations of our kids that loving your own culture and wanting to preserve it are racism. Last time I was in Paris, I saw a beautiful African woman in a grand boubou have her child defecate on the sidewalk next to Notre Dame Cathedral. The French police officer, ten steps from her, turned his head not to see. I have seen. I am not turning my head and pretending unpleasant things are not true. Senegal was not a hellhole. Very poor people can lead happy, meaningful lives in their own cultures' terms. But they are not our terms. The excrement is the least of it. Our basic ideas of human relations, right and wrong, are incompatible. As a twenty-one-year-old starting out in the Peace Corps, I loved Senegal. In fact, I was euphoric. I quickly made friends and had an adopted family. I relished the feeling of the brotherhood of man. People were open, willing to share their lives and, after they knew you, their innermost thoughts. The longer I lived there, the more I understood: it became blindingly obvious that the Senegalese are not the same as us. The truths we hold to be self-evident are not evident to the Senegalese. How could they be? Their reality is totally different. You can’t understand anything in Senegal using American terms. Take something as basic as family. Family was a few hundred people, extending out to second and third cousins. All the men in one generation were called "father." Senegalese are Muslim, with up to four wives. Girls had their clitorises cut off at puberty. (I witnessed this, at what I thought was going to be a nice coming-of-age ceremony, like a bat mitzvah or confirmation.) Sex, I was told, did not include kissing. Love and friendship in marriage were Western ideas. Fidelity was not a thing. Married women would have sex for a few cents to have cash for the market. What I did witness every day was that women were worked half to death. Wives raised the food and fed their own children, did the heavy labor of walking miles to gather wood for the fire, drew water from the well or public faucet, pounded grain with heavy hand-held pestles, lived in their own huts, and had conjugal visits from their husbands on a rotating basis with their co-wives. Their husbands lazed in the shade of the trees. Yet family was crucial to people there in a way Americans cannot comprehend. The Ten Commandments were not disobeyed - they were unknown. The value system was the exact opposite. You were supposed to steal everything you can to give to your own relatives. There are some Westernized Africans who try to rebel against the system. They fail. We hear a lot about the kleptocratic elites of Africa. The kleptocracy extends through the whole society. My town had a medical clinic donated by international agencies. The medicine was stolen by the medical workers and sold to the local store. If you were sick and didn’t have money, drop dead. That was normal. So here in the States, when we discovered that my 98-year-old father’s Muslim health aide from Nigeria had stolen his clothes and wasn’t bathing him, I wasn’t surprised. It was familiar. In Senegal, corruption ruled, from top to bottom. Go to the post office, and the clerk would name an outrageous price for a stamp. After paying the bribe, you still didn’t know it if it would be mailed or thrown out. That was normal. One of my most vivid memories was from the clinic. One day, as the wait grew hotter in the 110-degree heat, an old woman two feet from the medical aides - who were chatting in the shade of a mango tree instead of working - collapsed to the ground. They turned their heads so as not to see her and kept talking. She lay there in the dirt. Callousness to the sick was normal. Americans think it is a universal human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s not. It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture. We think the Protestant work ethic is universal. It’s not. My town was full of young men doing nothing. They were waiting for a government job. There was no private enterprise. Private business was not illegal, just impossible, given the nightmare of a third-world bureaucratic kleptocracy. It is also incompatible with Senegalese insistence on taking care of relatives. Senegal is full of smart, capable people. They will eventually solve their own country’s problems. They will do it on their terms, not ours. The solution is not to bring Africans here. We are lectured by Democrats that we must privilege third-world immigration by the hundred million with chain migration. They tell us we must end America as a white, Western, Judeo-Christian, capitalist nation - to prove we are not racist. I don’t need to prove a thing. Leftists want open borders because they resent whites, resent Western achievements, and hate America. They want to destroy America as we know it. As President Trump asked, why would we do that? We have the right to choose what kind of country to live in. I was happy to donate a year of my life as a young woman to help the poor Senegalese. I am not willing to donate my country.
Bollocks! China is the third-world and they produce some damn-fine scientists/engineers that might like to work in the US (because they have also learned English in England!) But we shouldn't hire them? Why not? The Dems are not lecturing ANYBODY about an unlimited "doors open" policy to migrants. ("Immigrants" are what my parents were; that is, first migrants allowed in with an entry-visa and then undertook the procedure for American naturalization.) Migrants are typically seasonal workers, and illegal if they stick-around once the season is over. We have a justified belief that the people arrested at borders without an Entry Visa should be released and sent home (if they have surrendered willingly). If not, they go before a court of law. As for all the rest regarding Africa, virtually all of it is "old news". Yes, Africa does not seem to want to change. No big deal. Give it time. At the moment, damn-few get into the US. They have however crossed the Mediterranean Sea in hordes and get into Europe. Where, for the most part, they DO NOT FIND ANY WORK. (Because they have no Entry Permit and neither any Work Permit!) Inevitably they leave and go back home because there is nowhere else! Apparently that is not the case in the US, where they stay hoping that the hand-of-God will deliver them a naturalization! Here in Europe, that permit will not likely come any time soon. There is already too much unemployment. So, they muddle around at odd-jobs and (for the most part) get the message and go back to Africa. At least, there, they have a family. Here in Europe they have nobody. The one exception to that rule in the EU is if they are escapees from a War-Zone. Yes, the migration from the south-hemisphere of America is detrimental to the US because it is EXCESSIVE. But, believe me, your apples 'n oranges are going to cost one helluva lot more if farmers are dependent upon "American pickers". Meaning what? This: The debate is mired in useless twaddle. The US should do in Middle and South America what is does as regards Europe. If a European finds a job in the US, applies for it, and the company ACCEPTS to offer them the position, then THAT COMPANY obtains any entry-permit for the person in question. There is no showing-up at American customs with a passport and a smile if the will be WORKING in the US! That same procedure for agricultural-producers should be in place for those coming from South and Central America. They get an Entry Work Permit (requested by an American employer) that is delivered to the American-consulate in their country of origin! So American fruit-companies should get off their Collective Asses if they are looking for help to pick "seasonal fruit and veggies". (Which are fast becoming non-seasonal year-round produce!) If you work for a company that wants to post you abroad, the job-context is very different and is covered by PS: Now ask Nancy if she has any problem with that above. I seriously doubt she has. (Because that procedure is a common agreement signed by a good number of countries that are members of the United Nations.)
Why don't you worry about the weekly gun-killings in the US? There are far, far more important problems as regards the well-being of America than some migrants wanting to work at jobs that Americans would not touch with a ten-foot pole ...
Um, because the murder rates in other Third World countries are much higher? Gun homicide rates in Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, are all higher than the US.
So? Go live there! Once again you are comparing apples with oranges because both are fruit. The murder rates in Third World countries are not of the same orgin as in the US. From the NYT here (June 13, 2016): Comparing Gun Deaths by Country: The U.S. Is in a Different World - extract: Of course, when you're dead, you're dead and it does not matter much how. What is key, I suggest, is the nature of the killings - because they are very different if in the US or, say, Central America ...
How can any nation be sooooo barbaric that people walk into a church/synagogue, public building, or meet-up and just start shooting-to-kill other people. What sort of "freedom" is that if one must be careful of where one goes and if they go what might happen when they are there? Is that what "living" has becoming in America? Perhaps indulging in a public massacre in order to commit suicide is the Newest Thing and it too will pass? Something has gone very-wrong in America boyz-'n-girlz and I (for one) believe Hollywood and TV are too blame ...
Because if we say anything about the weekly gun-killings in the US, the left shouts us down as racists.
One liner frustration devoid of any real pertinence. You'd be happier on Message Board. THIS IS A DEBATE-FORUM ... !
They do. That's why they don't want to import more of it. Why do you want to import more of it, if you don't like the amount you already have?
Quite true, but I believe the culture of corruption at the bottom percolates its way up towards the top. People higher up are deathly afraid of falling towards the bottom, and as they claw their way higher up, they still carry those corrupt values with them. I believe those born into aristocratic privilege in these countries are least likely to be corrupt. But they are often most likely to be out of touch with the economic circumstances of the common people. So there are some trade-offs.
