Month: September 2021

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I find myself increasingly irritated with the quality of reporting emanating from even the most prestigious news outlets like the BBC and the New York Times in regards to the evacuation of Kabul. It seems like everybody needs to get evacuated. Everybody.  I am not sure why and they aren’t particularly adept at telling me why.

A good example of this occurred several weeks back on the BBC that still nags at me.  Lyse Doucet, a BBC correspondent, interviewed an Afghan man who felt abandoned by the British because of visa issues which left him in Kabul after the Taliban took over. The man worked for the contract caterer who supplied meals for the British Embassy. He felt like he served the British well during his tenure and deserved evacuation without all of the visa application roadblocks the British government were putting in his way. Again, his only connection to the British government was serving meals to the embassy staff. He felt this work made his immigration during this time of chaos automatic and necessitates the British to ignore their application process for him and his family. He never really explained why other than he worked hard for the British. Doucet doesn’t pursue it. She does let the viewer know he feels abandoned and would like to very much for the British government’s help in bringing him there. 

I do not want to live in a Taliban controlled Afghanistan. I feel sorry for any Westerner or any Afghan ally who was left there.  I also want the Western governments to continue to help anyone who wants to leave.  I am sure that there are hundreds of thousands of people who want to leave Afghanistan. But, if the BBC was looking for a compelling story about someone trapped in Kabul and who is in immediate danger from the Taliban, the trusted news organization missed the mark by quite a lot with this particular story.

Evacuating a country, in the best of circumstances, is difficult operation. Afghanistan is far from a perfect situation. The country is in a civil war.  It was a dangerous place before the Taliban took over and it remains a dangerous place today now that the Taliban has taken control.  Both the Westerners who went to Afghanistan and the Afghan allies who worked with western governments knew this when taking their jobs. The British government was faced with a difficult job of evacuating their citizens and any Afghans allies. They had to prioritize based on the chaos around them, the resources available to them and the people who needed to leave immediately.

This is where the BBC breaks down. Just because the man felt he should be evacuated doesn’t mean that it was urgent for him to leave, or that it is important for him to jump the queue. Doucet doesn’t even try to make his case.   I kept thinking what exactly has he done that warrants the British government getting this man and his family to Britain. I am sympathetic to him wanting to leave, a lot of people do. But does he risk death or prison because he remains in Afghanistan. Did the Taliban threaten him?  Did the BBC have evidence of the Taliban threatening anyone and everyone who worked with the British embassy?  What were other Western governments doing for their catering staff?

Doucet milked this man’s uncompelling story for all that it was worth while spending precious little time determining if the man warrants any real concern. It is sad that he wasn’t on the list to evacuate immediately but if I were compiling that list, and given the facts I have, I would certainly have left his name off of it. Which leaves me pondering why the BBC chose to air this story. I am certain there are better examples out there that illustrates the point they were trying to make. Unfortunately, this man’s story fails miserably. It lacks both context and urgency. In the end I learned about an Afghan who doesn’t want to live under Taliban rule and who felt his very tenuous link with the British government entitled him to better treatment. The British government disagreed and he remains in Afghanistan with a lot of other Afghans who want to leave and who will have to struggle with British visa process to gain entrance.  It is a sad story and I am sure there will be more sad stories like it before the Taliban is through, but the man was not abandoned and he doesn’t warrant any special treatment.

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I accidentally got involved in Facebook argument the other day.  I know better than to argue with people who disagree vehemently with my position as I can never change that person’s mind. NEVER. If a person is passionate about an issue they are committed. They do, however, think that they can change yours. The argument will begin with the pretense of reasoned argument and end with taunts and name-calling.  I avoid these types of arguments as much as I can.

I stepped into this particular pile of shit because I thought I was replying to someone I knew, and probably agreed with. The post had the following statement: Why do you hate the rich? I answered the question with another question: Why do the rich hate us? There are billionaires out there that make more money than they know how to spend, why don’t they give this money to the poor and middle class so that everyone can enjoy a better life.  Today’s rich live in the greatest luxury known to humanity so even if they were taxed more, they would continue to enjoy the good life with little, if any, discernible change in how they live.

As I thought I was talking to my largely liberal friends, who would disagree? Yet, the disagreeing comments came.  When I checked the names of my opponents, I realized these were not people I knew and I should move on without comment.  I need to make a small confession here. I like to argue politics.  It is fun.  Or it used to be. I remember in college that I would go to a bar with people of varying political beliefs. We would drink and argue, but even though drink was involved we were mostly respectful of other people’s opinion, we listened and occasionally minds were changed.

Facebook arguments, if you haven’t been in one, aren’t friendly bar room arguments.  And that alone is saying a lot. I would rather argue with blind drunk political partisan in a bar than a completely sober person on Facebook.  Facebook arguments are savage hand-to-hand combat followed by the full nuclear arsenal raining down on the wounded bodies strewn across a bloody battlefield. It is bloody to participate in, impossible to win and thus pointless to respond.

But if I were to respond this is what I would say.

The crux of their argument wasn’t even an argument, it was a question: why did I care about how the rich spent their money.  It was their money and they earned it. This is where I disagree. What happens is that a company receives profit and the leaders of the company decide to divide the money between the people who are employed at the company.  The people who divide the pot are also the big wage earners. Low income earners are not invited to this particular table.   

It should be no surprise to anyone that the people dividing up the pie are the same people taking the biggest slice of the pie. The perverse side effect of this type of distribution is that high earners demand more and more money because their wages keep increasing and in order for companies to stay competitive they must pay their top earners more while the lower income earners wages are stagnant and there is little pressure to give this group more money. In fact, the top wage earners have abandoned their low wage-earning peers by putting more and more pressure on the lower income earners through automation and out-sourcing. So, while everyone at a company contributed to creating the profit, the top wage earners decided to take the lion’s share of the money claiming that the market made them do it. They personally had nothing to do with this skewed distribution, we are only following the dictates of the market.  If it was up to us, we would happily pay more money to low wage earners but, the market, you know must have its way.

Which brings me back to my question: Why do the rich hate us.  They take an unequal portion of the profits. They drive down global wages. They allow low income earners, people who by the way work a full-time job, to live in precarious economic situation while they live in luxury. They work to limit access to good public services for low income people. They are contemptuous of everyone who makes less money than them. Why do they hate us so?