We are now past the stage of “it’s a lie that USAID is used to promote far-left ideology overseas” to “yes, it’s true, but this is a small percentage of the US budget.”
As if doing this cheaply made it OK. USAID used people’s poverty and desperation to make them say, teach, publish and do things they didn’t believe. This is the equivalent of me telling a person living in a Guatemalan slum, “OK, I’ll feed you but you have to drop on your knees and proclaim that I’m your lord and master.” The fact that I can do this for the low price of 15 bucks does not make my actions moral and acceptable.
I vividly remember how this was done to us in the newly independent Ukraine back in 1991. People were lost and confused because everything had changed so fast on them. And these absolute bastards used us to throw us coins and have us dance in feather skirts for them. Obviously, I mean this metaphorically. No actual feather skirts were involved.
The absolute hubris of thinking that you are entitled to impose your ideology on people overseas because having money makes you superior. And the funniest thing is that it’s precisely the people who prattle endlessly how they are against imperialism who do this.