LA Progressive

Let’s be honest: Americans don’t care about Africa – by and large, at least. Despite the lies we tell ourselves – and the raging debates we have – about PC-culture, critical race theory, and so on, this remains a salient fact.

Sure, the delusion is soothing. It tends to bring virtue-signaled solace to many a liberal mainly concerned with showing off the latest in proper buzzwords. It offers the satisfaction of righteous rage to those conservatives mainly concerned with smearing snowflakes. But much of this – despite the genuine importance of the debates at hand – is theater, narcissistic navel-gazing gone amok.

In reality, across the political and social spectrum most people maintain wildly Western – specifically Euro – centric world-views, and Africa still exists in their imaginations as (at best) one grand Sally Struthers-hosted “Save-the-Children” commercial.

Just look at the coverage gap between Russo-Ukrainian hypotheticals in Eastern Europe, and a simultaneous array of actual African disasters unfolding before our (closed) eyes. Now, the crisis in Ukraine is no joke. The thing could kick-off the most egregious European conventional war since Hitler and Stalin locked horns. And this time there are nukes aplenty on both sides.

Still, a few caveats seem salient. For starters, thousands of Africans – and even a few Western soldiers – are actually dying down there. Second, the conflicts in question involve – at least tangentially (or in alarmist Washingtonian heads) – some of the same competitors, such as the US, France, and Russia (plus China to boot!). Finally, as in Eastern Europe, the US – and other Western little brothers – bear much of the responsibility for, if not starting these conflict-fires, well…certainly accelerating them.

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