One man's tragedy is irrelevant to me

I recently made a statement that went something like this: "Life is tough. The strong deal with it in their own way. The weak strive to make their difficulties the problems of the strong." The funny thing is that if the weak stopped wasting all the effort they expend trying to hoist their problems onto others, and instead used it to solve their own problems, they could be strong too. Yet they don't. We seem to live in a world where the victim is valued more than those who take care of themselves. Why is it so great to be incapable and dependent on others?

A natural disaster recently befell a certain country. There was an incredibly high death toll, and people are still suffering difficulties from it. For all intents and purposes this is a third world country. Half the country is illiterate. Nothing of irreplaceable value comes from this place. So this natural disaster (in this case, an earthquake) takes place and suddenly the world takes notice.

An especially interesting fact is that now that this country has been struck with hard ship, we suddenly take pity on them and send them money for things they had little to none of. Suddenly clean water and medical care is available here. Much of it from the United States. Funny how they were a poor and broke down slum of a nation for over a century, and no one cared. The death toll in this country has always been pretty high due to poor health care (about 30,000 people per year are afflicted with Malaria). I find it strange how the leaders of said nation have either done nothing to develop a stable economy for their country or have tried and failed to do so. Now the leaders of this country will go down in history as the one(s) who got their "proud nation through this time of trials". The people who survived the quake are being praised as strong and courageous. So they're praised for not dying from something they didn't know was going to happen? Yeah well I flew a kite in a hurricane! What does that say about me! How great am I for knowing what I was getting into?

It must also be said that this country is not a developing nation. They are not developing. No progress has been made by this country to improve it's existence (efforts, maybe, but no progress). In fact, the quality of life for this place may have even gotten worse over the years. The really sad thing is that 80% of the people in this country who are college educated, emigrate to the United States. So the people who could improve it actually choose not to. So that means that this nation is left weakened by the people currently populating or who used to populate it.

So, we've established that this certain nation is weak, and that nature has pummeled the hell out of it. What do they do now? Well they never quite had the facilities to help themselves even before the earthquake, so it stands to reason they don't have the resources necessary to clean up the damage now. Thankfully we have the media to pass the buck onto the U.S. government. No, really! That's just fine that we're now expected to take care of places that were never even stable in the first place. That's kind of like paying to fix up a dilapidated old house, and then doing nothing with it. That right there is an investment with zero chance of return. But yet it's our responsibility to look after places where "tragedy" strikes. Odd.

Some might say that the whole incident is tragic because so many people died. That's a damn joke. People are killed in large numbers every day, and no one says jack. There are three reasons for this.
1.) When people get thrown in mass graves in S. America or Africa (a daily occurrence, I assure you), there isn't always a reporter to catch it on video, and people only know about current events via the media. But just because you didn't hear about it doesn't mean it didn't happen.
2.) Another reason people are sitting up and taking notice is because natural disasters of this magnitude don't happen every day. Every once in a while though, you get a massive tsunami, hurricane, or earthquake and everyone's interested. People like to hear about things that don't happen often....I'm not sure why.
3.) This disaster happened practically right in our back yard. The Caribbean (where this disaster took place) is technically a part of N. America. Since N. America is part of the continent that we (American citizens) live in we feel that it's relevant to our lives, and so should feel bad or otherwise have an opinion.

I'll tell you folks: I've never been to this country. I've never wanted to. I don't know anyone from there, or who ever has been there. I've been aware of this place and it's horrendous poverty since I was in the fourth grade. I didn't care about it then, and haven't since. I don't care what anyone says; if they were a strong nation with strong people, they'd be able to recover from this problem on their own. As it is, I don't see how the earthquake that hit them is the United States' problem, or the tax-payers' for that matter.