When Your Little Ohio Town Becomes Port Au Prince and No One Cares
9th September 2024
The third world used to be something Americans used as a measuring stick to hold against other cities or countries we visited or dealt with. When I would pull the newspapers back over a child sleeping in a doorway on the streets of Olongapo, that was “third world.”
When a couple of American Marines weren’t sure if, going in with the first wave to Somalia, they could shoot their “African brothers.” Their first whiff of Mogadishu and first encounter with life on the streets there soon made them realize they weren’t related – that was the third world.
For sure, we have grinding poverty here, but there is someone always working to do something about it. There is always that American Dream, as elusive as it may be in some circumstances.
In the third world, class distinctions and brutalization keep people in endless cycles of poverty, violence, ignorance, and despair. Stealing food and fighting for supremacy over turf is the way of life. Survival is the way of life.