Photograph Source: Embajada de EEUU en Argentina – CC BY 2.0

According to Elon Musk, USAID, America’s chief foreign aid agency, “deserves to die.” Why? Because it is “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.”

What planet does this strange fellow live on? I AM a radical-left Marxist professor – one who happens to love America – and for more than forty years I have been criticizing USAID for not being radical or leftist at all. What the irate oligarch means by “marxist” is anyone’s guess. I know a good many people who have worked for the agency and I’d bet money that the only ones who know anything about dialectical materialism, the organic composition of capital, or the theory of alienation are those who have taken my graduate classes.

What Musk doesn’t understand (inter alia) is that USAID has two conflicting missions. First, its employees and contractors try to relieve suffering in other lands by giving their people disaster relief, poverty relief, and technical assistance,........

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