Sudan and us

Erudite Partner has attempted something nearly impossible in her latest article for the aggregation site, TomDispatch: she's tried to alert us to the ongoing agony of the civil war in Sudan where massacre and atrocity are the seemingly unending reality. 

This horror is not in front of us every day. Our media have pretty much given up on making it salient. This conflict is complicated; the warring parties include both local combatants and meddling foreign powers. There's a racial element, Arabs fighting Black Africans. For once, our own country is not the most significant international interloper. Yet as a result of Elon Musk's chainsaw to USAID, Donald Trump killed off our country's contributions to relief efforts. Millions of Sudanese are displaced; millions are without homes or livelihood. Millions are starving and hundred of thousands of women and children are dying in refugee camps.

And the trajectory in Sudan (and Algeria and Egypt) where militaries with their own agendas fight it out to the detriment of the civilian society should point to a warning to us all. This is what happens when a social order breaks down and the men with guns take what they can grab.

Displaced people take rest on the road from Darfur to Chad, where hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees have fled since the onset of the war. | 2025 © Jérôme Tubiana/MSF

When I looked for photos of Sudanese refugees to illustrate a post about the E.P.'s article, Surprising Lessons for the U.S. Resistance to Trump In Sudan’s Recent History, I looked for pictures from international aid agencies. Those are the westerners who are there alongside the Sudanese; the agencies want us to see what the world is ignoring. Seeing the pictures left me weepy -- but not because the horrors were so awful or novel. I've seen all too many pictures of maimed and starving children. But because images from Sudan, images of Sudanese women and children, seem so terribly beautiful. I've included one here.

The rich world has turned away from all this suffering. Does our willing ignorance bode well for the endurance of all our own societies? Modernity means we can see if we choose; how numb have we become?

Let them go hungry!

It's not okay to keep food which is readily available from reaching people who are hungry. Period. 

Yet that is what Budget Tsar Russell Vought is doing in order to try to force Democratic Senators to pass Republicans' big bill which takes money from healthcare and gives it as tax breaks to Donald's billionaire buddies. 

Along with other lawlessness, there goes SNAP food aid and some fishermen for desert.

Economist Paul Krugman summarizes this move:

Despite the government shutdown, the SNAP program isn’t out of money. In fact, it has $5 billion in contingency funds, intended as a reserve to be tapped in emergencies. And if the imminent cutoff of crucial food aid for 40 million people isn’t an emergency, what is? ...

He goes on to show a map of where the resulting hunger will be worst; looks to me as if the harm will be most severe in some native tribal areas and in pockets of the deep South that vote for Trump. They are beating up on the most vulnerable people, a lot their own supporters.

The Orange Toddler has other priorities. Like extorting the government for $230 billion in compensation for investigating his crimes during the previous administration.

And turning the People's House into a tacky monument to himself.

SNAP is a pillar of my working poor neighborhood. The little stores will be in trouble, as well as families, many of which include workers who simply don't make enough to get by without help.

This is what MAGA grievance has wrought. 

The cruelty is the point ...

Usually, I don't want to just fill this space with outrage. But here's an exception.

Did you know that Republican governors in fifteen states have rejected federal money to help feed kids out of school in the summer? They are denying food aid to some 8 million children already qualified for food under the regular season school lunch program. 

Some people have been watching too much Fox News. Why might governors chose this path:

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said she saw no need to add money to a program that helps food-insecure youths “when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.” Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) said bluntly, “I don’t believe in welfare.”

... Pillen, the Nebraska governor, said in a statement that the program is “unnecessary and is not adequate to meeting the needs of children. … Handing out money is not enough to meet kid’s needs. They need much more.”

The states denying help to poor kids include Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming.

I looked up why usually generous Vermont might have joined this backward bunch. According to Vermont Public Radio, state officials explained:

... Vermont lacks the IT system needed to streamline the collection of eligibility information from participating households

The problem here is state poverty, not cruel misgivings about feeding poor kids. 

• • •

The good news of the day is that More then 20 Million People Have Signed Up for Obamacare Plans, Blowing by Record. 

Little by little, over the bodies of obstructive Republicans, we're making this rich country a better country.