Bag-ucation

‘This child [Jesus] is destined … to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed ….’ (Luke 2:34-35)

The malignant malice and ignorance of Elon Musk and his cadre of young tech-bros transports me to the belly of a C-130 turbo prop flying at 20,000 feet over the horn of Africa.

How I’d love to go back and take them with me, riding the bags, not that I think it would do much to illumine the darkened souls of those who imagine human life and society can be reduced to a series of algorithms.

There are a few things they don’t know as they stump their way through the national treasury like a bear in heat, supposedly eliminating waste and fraud, which would actually require them to know something about what federal dollars do.

I am far from an expert, but I know what it is to ride bags of USAID grain into war zones and killing fields amid rampant starvation.

I sat on those bags and climbed into the cockpit more than once or twice to listen to pilots talk to aid workers on the ground, who advised them whether it was safe to land. I watched men young and younger than Musk’s arrogant army scramble to unload tons of grain and cooking oil from those planes, loading them on smaller trucks and jeeps before hostile soldiers and warlord bandits descended with AK-47s to steal it.

Those jeeps and trucks bore many signs, like, WFP, the World Food Program, Catholic Relief Services, International Committee of the Red Cross, Goal, and Doctors Without Borders. The food whisked away went to feeding and distribution centers run by these agencies and others, including the Sisters of Charity, Save the Children and Lutheran World Federation-World Service, whose initials, LWF, were also emblazoned on some of the C-130s.

It is not only domestically, within the United States, that the U.S. government depends on public-private partnerships—such as with Lutheran and Catholic social services—to accomplish aspects of its mission.

Those bags of grain represent only a small portion, I’m sure, of the work and reach of USAID. But I know this much: Lives are saved. Regions are stabilized or given the hope of stabilization. U.S. foreign policy goals are served, undergirding the reputation of the United States as a just, generous and reliable partner in the welter of global affairs.

I doubt Musk and his minions know much, if any of this, and they show no evidence that they care to know, as they slash away at the fabric of relationships that help hold the world together and keep it, at least, somewhat sane and decent.

Still, I would love to take them for a ride in one of those Southern Air Transport planes. I’d have them scramble to pick of 50-kilogram bags of grain and carry them down the ramp and onto the trucks. I’d like to watch them look over their shoulders, wondering if they were about to come face-to-face with armed men, who didn’t give a damn who they are or what they think they know.

I want aid workers to walk them among starving kids with orange hair, kwashiorkor, as they withered away. 

I’d like to bring them face-to-face with something beyond a confounded computer screen so they might see the faces of these kids—and the young men and women who work among them, revealing a depth and beauty of heart they, too, could have … if only they could feel something beyond the cocksure arrogance of those who know little more than numbers on a screen.

I’d call it bag-ucation.