From Trevelyan to Trump, How Prejudice Stemmed Relief in Ireland and Puerto Rico
History is frequently doomed to repeat itself.
The active neglect by conservatives of the desperation in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands is a sad chapter of human history.
Conservatives (folk who value money more than lives) have committed genocide through starvation throughout history for the purpose of fun and profit.
From Trevelyan to Trump: How Preudice Stemmed Relief in Ireland and Puerto Rico (goes to Irish Central, more at the link):
If Irish people wince when they watch Donald Trump scold and blame Puerto Rico for its problems, it’s because we have seen this kind of thing before during the Great Hunger.
Donald Trump’s high handed response to the suffering of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Irma reminds us of the English indifference to Ireland during the Great Hunger.
Throughout the tragic potato blight in Ireland the infamous British colonial administrator Charles Trevelyan expressed hostile racial sentiments towards the Irish, who at the time were starving by the million thanks to the centuries long colonial exploitation that was enriching his countrymen.
Both Trevelyan and Trump have been accused by observers of “remarkable insensitivity” to the two suffering nations, and both men clearly let their own prejudices guide their responses to the life-altering crisis they had the power to change.
Trevelyan simply saw famine as a “mechanism for reducing surplus population,” and in 1846 he declared it was “the direct stroke of an all-wise Providence in a manner as unexpected and as unthought-of as it is likely to be effectual.”