Bill Gates did a lot for Africans but in return his reputation was tarnished. By making conspiracies about vaccines or criticism of him over patents.
America intervened in Somalia just to help feed people still so many people criticize it.
The issue with helping Africans is that instead of praise you get criticism. But if you only do virtue signaling it doesn’t cost you anything. So incentive is to do nothing.
Quite true but the types that usually would care and volunteer to help in developing countries never were the same as the virtue-signaling self-pity kind. Actually takes balls and care. In these, I think there is a general sense that Western-directed aid is not very efficient, and harmful at times. Or at least, that the business-like approach of China is delivering better in Africa.
Like, it's harder to play the role of the white saviour preaching your cultural gospel, when these far less haughty Chinese dudes build the roads and telecoms that are actually needed there.
Jason Russell also an early case study in how going viral/sustained attention from hundreds of millions of people can literally overwhelm the nervous system; he had a brief, public psychotic incident in 2012 at the height of his campaign's popularity and was hospitalized. A brief google says he's now doing well.
Rwanda, Sudan and Kony involve black villains. People only want white villains nowadays, preferably hurting non-white people. Atrocities that don’t fit that framework are ignored or downplayed. Even Ukraine can’t get the attention Gaza does.
I think that there will be a market for these types of sentiments to come back. Many figures on the modern left privately understand that anti-market and other leftist policies do not work practically and are electoral losers. Nevertheless, there is a big demand among college students to be on the 'right side of history' by opposing some sort of major political injustice. The Israel and Palestine conflict filled this niche: politicians like Zohran and AOC can 'take a stand' against Israel, direct college campus and DSA activists towards this aim, without risking damaging the Democrat brand or being backed into a status quo where they have to enact some disastrous policy. Opposing injustices in Africa is another issue that could fill this type of void. Most 'left-wing' Democrat politicians are educated and bright people who are privately aware of basic economic literature: they are just stuck with an activist, idealistic base that are opposed to 'liberalism' because it reminds them of their parents and implies brutal and hard truths about the world. The name of the game with 'Zohran leftism' is finding issues like this to divert the base, engaging in optics well to make young supporters feel like you are 'trendy', while quietly governing in a liberal way. Zohran himself is not a perfect encapsulation of this trend yet but it is the direction the cultural headwinds are going in.
Bill Gates did a lot for Africans but in return his reputation was tarnished. By making conspiracies about vaccines or criticism of him over patents.
America intervened in Somalia just to help feed people still so many people criticize it.
The issue with helping Africans is that instead of praise you get criticism. But if you only do virtue signaling it doesn’t cost you anything. So incentive is to do nothing.
Quite true but the types that usually would care and volunteer to help in developing countries never were the same as the virtue-signaling self-pity kind. Actually takes balls and care. In these, I think there is a general sense that Western-directed aid is not very efficient, and harmful at times. Or at least, that the business-like approach of China is delivering better in Africa.
Like, it's harder to play the role of the white saviour preaching your cultural gospel, when these far less haughty Chinese dudes build the roads and telecoms that are actually needed there.
Jason Russell also an early case study in how going viral/sustained attention from hundreds of millions of people can literally overwhelm the nervous system; he had a brief, public psychotic incident in 2012 at the height of his campaign's popularity and was hospitalized. A brief google says he's now doing well.
Rwanda, Sudan and Kony involve black villains. People only want white villains nowadays, preferably hurting non-white people. Atrocities that don’t fit that framework are ignored or downplayed. Even Ukraine can’t get the attention Gaza does.
I think that there will be a market for these types of sentiments to come back. Many figures on the modern left privately understand that anti-market and other leftist policies do not work practically and are electoral losers. Nevertheless, there is a big demand among college students to be on the 'right side of history' by opposing some sort of major political injustice. The Israel and Palestine conflict filled this niche: politicians like Zohran and AOC can 'take a stand' against Israel, direct college campus and DSA activists towards this aim, without risking damaging the Democrat brand or being backed into a status quo where they have to enact some disastrous policy. Opposing injustices in Africa is another issue that could fill this type of void. Most 'left-wing' Democrat politicians are educated and bright people who are privately aware of basic economic literature: they are just stuck with an activist, idealistic base that are opposed to 'liberalism' because it reminds them of their parents and implies brutal and hard truths about the world. The name of the game with 'Zohran leftism' is finding issues like this to divert the base, engaging in optics well to make young supporters feel like you are 'trendy', while quietly governing in a liberal way. Zohran himself is not a perfect encapsulation of this trend yet but it is the direction the cultural headwinds are going in.