Dumbest thing I've read this week

[awesomelies]

(on Twitter, re Haiti): "Screw logistics. Get these people help NOW."

Screw petrol! Start this car now!

Comments

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

It's weird, though; it fits so neatly into the anti-technocratic git-'er-done school of thought that looms so large in American political discourse these days. Anything that involves skills that I do not possess or understand must, perforce, be a swindle of some kind.

[awesomelies.livejournal.com]

I was thinking something along those lines; not so much the "anti-technocratic git-'er-done" thing, which I didn't know was so prevalent (how depressing), but how the problem is that good behaviour in these circumstances so unfortunately matches the kind of boondoggling that charities are always being accused of. Employ serious professionals who know what they're doing (eg the above article's reference to people who can set up a backpack radio in ten minutes in an unsympathetic environment)? That's wasting cash on well-paid UK jobs. Make sure that, as you say, your field workers have decent food, water, sanitation and shelter? That's an arrogant disregard for the starving victims around you. And so on, and bloody so on.