This is something that occurred to me a few months ago and I never really mentioned it or remembered it until now, but with the current judicial and health care climate (not to mention the climate of insurance companies), one could argue that on a particular episode of Tyra, Tyra Banks and Alicia Keys could be held responsible for the death of a young African boy and possibly his entire family.
With the health care and insurance industries being what they are, there exists things as far as 3rd party liability. For example, let's say you're riding down the sidewalk on your bike and you hit a crack in the sidewalk and you fall and moderately injure yourself. Thanks to the beauty of 3rd party liability, you can sue people as far up as the contractor who was hired to lay down the cement on the sidewalk. So you could sue the manufacturer of the bike you were riding, the manufacturer of specific parts on the bike, possibly the manufacturer of any safety gear you were wearing, the city or county in which this took place, the contractor, the worker that physically poured the concrete, etc.
The situation with Tyra and Alicia Keys (who's involved with some African organization) is this - on her show, Tyra gave this African boy whos live is ravaged with a poor school, poor village/family, etc., all this new shit. They gave him tons of new clothes, an iPod (which was conveniently loaded with all of Alicia Keys' music), and some other stuff I can't recall. Now I work with about 3 people from Africa, one of which was sitting next to me, and he basically said that the militias will kill him, possibly his whole family, possibly his whole village, all because he's got all that nice shit. If they don't kill him they'll just kill everyone else, excluding the kids, and just make them join the militia. Most of those kids become soldiers, sex slaves, spies, or even human shields. It's pretty much the equivalent of driving a new Bentley or Ferrari in South East DC.
Now, with 3rd party liability in mind, who's responsible if that happens? If he didn't have all that nice new stuff, there would at least be LESS of a chance for the militia to even bother. The sentiment to try and change the world or to FEEL AS IF you're going to help or change the world sometimes has blowback. Tons of money in aid has been thrown at Africa over the past nearly 30 years and not much of it has done any good because it just gets intercepted by the wrong people, yet people still continue to throw money over there. Why? This goes hand in hand with the US's self-proclaimed responsibility to try and police the world, and look where that got us. People hate the shit out of us, we're going broke, and we're putting ourselves in the crosshairs of others. We've had a presence in Korea for 50 years. What for?
This sense of urgency to stop all "naughty" things that go on in the world is ridiculous. I was behind a woman in the grocery store yesterday who had all reusable grocery bags, ironically from Trader Joe's. Now, what does this woman think she's accomplishing by doing that? What causes this impulse for people to go out of their way to essentially run on a treadmill of doing good things, yet accomplishing nothing? Saddam is gassing his own people (when we gave him the gas), so we need to invade Iraq. There's communism in Afghanistan, so we need to give Afghan's Stinger missles. There's global warming, so I need to blow a bunch of money on shit so I can be "green". It's almost like crack, you feel good for about 5 minutes, you never accomplish anything, you end up broke, but you keep doing it. Yet, where's the positive outcome?
To me, shit like that is just a control issue. Granted, you are the master of your own domain, but your domain only extends but so far. You're not the master of everyone elses domain, so why are you trying to be? Horrible shit like that African kids situation is going on right now, yet we're installing a democracy in Iraq and, if Obama gets his way, which he will, Afghanistan. I also hear that Obama is enlisting the help of Soviets to get this done? Didn't they pull out the last time because they couldn't afford it anymore? And where are they getting the money to do it this time, us? Where are WE getting the money? We're already borrowing money from China...
Holy shit.
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