When we rang in the New Year, I wasn’t remotely expecting politics to collide with my career, my family and me. In a matter of weeks, I had lost my job, my father and, I felt, my country.
I spent a dozen years as a program officer for USAid, serving in countries in South America, Africa and Asia with my family. I loved my job working with governments and NGOs to improve the lives of those in need. Doing good and doing well, we said. I was helping to build an information system to improve aid transparency and efficiency when sudden news arrived.
At 5pm on a Friday, we received an email saying our particular contract had been shut down. In all, 10,000 professionals were dismissed from their jobs, while Elon Musk called us a criminal organization and its staff – me included – a “ball of worms”. The wrecking had begun.
At USAid headquarters, administrative assistants were ordered to take down all the pictures of the many people the agency helps around the world, as if it had been something shameful. Only clocks were left on the walls. More cravenly, the administration blocked access to the wall of names honoring those who had given their lives to the cause. Trump officials canceled USAid’s building contract and handed it over to US Customs and Border Protection.
The same clocks on the walls that had once marked time over Americans helping people in need overseas may now mark time over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents deporting people to those countries and others.
The Trump administration is abandoning millions of people around the world and cutting off life-saving services. We are losing goodwill and influence – diplomatic, economic and moral. A good sign that closing USAid was a mistake: China is already moving in to fill the void, and strongly rightwing leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán are applauding.
The destruction is also almost certainly unconstitutional in a number of ways, and aspects continue to be reviewed, blocked or upheld by courts lagging behind the speed at which laws are being broken. A showdown on the reach of executive power has begun.
These changes hit me very close to home. A significant number of my family are conservatives who voted for Trump, fueled by two decades of misinformation promoting hate and anger. Despite this, in the interests of our family integrity, we have learned to talk to one another respectfully. We avoid topics related to politics and focus on our love for each other, jigsaw puzzles and American football (until even that became “woke”).
Blindsided at work, I was next blindsided at home. Two days after USAid was lost, my father died unexpectedly. Thankfully, my dad and I had been able to say we loved each other before he died. The kids and I flew out and we spent a beautiful week together with the family grieving his loss.
However, in a strange moment at the end of the week, my mother told me that I shouldn’t talk about USAid because I didn’t know what I was talking about (as if I had no idea about the organization where I had spent my career). Armed with details from her trusted websites, she informed me that USAid was performing sex changes on children and funding terrorist groups. We defused the moment, but it demonstrated how unchecked deception fomented by wealthy interests so gravely distorts people’s views.
Obviously, all of these sudden losses have given me pause to reflect.
Despite some people’s attempts to reshape the US and its place in the world, we have not seen the end of American generosity. Humans are successful because we cooperate. We have obligations to each other as living beings. We also know that we can’t make ideas go away, and the best ones – like kindness and caring for others – are actually what bind us.
The dismantling of USAid as an institution does not mean that the US’s generosity of spirit has also been eradicated. USAid was a longstanding independent agency established by John F Kennedy, receiving consistent bipartisan support because it advanced America’s foreign policy objectives by helping others.
Such values have not disappeared. We can be certain that, in one form or another, US aid will return.
Christian Smith is an American citizen and former USAid officer who lives between Dublin and Spain
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
