Part 2: Response to "Why I Unfriended You"

By Regina Landor

In my last Substack post, I wrote about the global harm being done by cutting off USAID funds, and my own connection to the agency. Big reaction. Almost all positive. One was meh. This person expressed mixed feelings about my post, saying that unfriending someone because they have different views is widening the gap / making the problem worse. She gave an example of how she was able to convince a family member who was dead-set against USAID to rethink, and ultimately change his mind. 

That’s awesome. I don’t have the skill-set to verbally convince anyone of anything. (Ask my kids.) It’s not my perspective, but I thanked her for hers. 

Another person DMed me. 

This was after I saw that she’d posted on her Facebook page a tabloid-like image of celebrities like Sean Penn who were supposedly paid millions of dollars by USAID to go to Ukraine. Underneath the photo, I asked her to please stop. I told her she doesn’t know anything about the agency, and said that hatred spreads fast. 

To her credit, she removed the article. But then she began sparring with me in text messages. 

She told me she’d “research” the article but she doesn’t have “full evidence” yet. (“Research it?” my husband said, and cracked up. “Is she a reporter?”)

She told me it was “sad” that I unfriended that person. 

I wanted to tell her, Don’t worry about me! I’m good! I’m not that sad about it! 

I wanted to tell her there is no reason to keep a “friend” on FB just so that I can get riled up when I see her posts. FB is not where I get my news! I get it on NPR, and from newspapers like the NYTimes. And to throw in a little controversy when I can stand it, Fox News, which my husband turns on so he can see what they are spouting. 

Where I really get my information about The United States Agency for International Development is from the hundreds of stories I have heard over the past 17 years from my husband and my friends who work there. 

Not good enough. She wrote on and on about big pharmaceuticals and corporations. “I mean, have you actually seen USAID’s balance sheets, Regina?” 

My husband whose job it is to look at USAID balance sheets said, “Has she?” and laughed again. 

I wanted to say that what’s most upsetting to me is not so much that she doesn’t believe in vaccines (although that is highly upsetting given that we know vaccines save lives), but that she’s forming opinions on things she knows nothing about / has no inside knowledge.

Should I have said I was sad for her that she received a polio vaccine when she was a child? That her little baby arm was pricked with a needle? Instead, she could have been like my neighbor, Mr. Barta, who lived across the street from me where I grew up, had polio when he was a kid and because of it, lost the use of his legs for life. Would she have preferred that kind of childhood? Should I have reminded her that fruits and vegetables and homeopathic medicine (all which have their place in the world of health) are not gonna cut it for an infant who has HIV? 

Nah. I’m too exhausted. 

I decided I would just not engage anymore. It’s too tiring engaging with people who are intent on speaking ill of something they know nothing about (like foreign aid). If I weren’t so tired I’d tell her that if she’s so eager to rant, how about picking a cause which really does do harm? Ever hear of school shootings? What about helping to roadblock the dismantling of Meals on Wheels so the elderly who depend on visits don’t die of loneliness? Oh! I have a good one for her. How about protesting the power-mongering politicians who lick the asses of billionaire oligarchs? Gee whiz. For people who like evil, it’s like we’re living in a candy store with all the colorful varieties and flavors to choose from. What a plethora of options we have right now!  

To hone in on an agency which does massive amounts of work to eradicate diseases, promote human rights, support girls’ education and sex ed in rural villages, and women’s health—not to mention the obvious one of stifling the pain of hunger—to hone in on an agency because you don’t like vaccines, or because you object to giving away less than one cent of your precious tax dollar leaves me gobsmacked. Worse. Because I realize there are a whole lotta people who walk around with this kind of ignorance, not just her. 

Instead of sparring with a person who does not understand why it’s important to promote human rights in parts of the world where people are executed for speaking their truth (literally a matter of life and death—my husband’s colleague, Xulhaz Mannan, a beautiful, soulful human being, was killed with a machete in his own apartment for founding a gay rights magazine, a horror which reverberated around the world and which subsequently resulted in an uptick in promoting human rights by USAID), I guess I’d rather use my energy to write a letter to Stanley Tucci, author of the book Taste, and thank him for getting me through this tough time. The book is a wonderful, delicious escape from the hourly news which pours in. 

Each day we learn of another friend who’s being affected by the inhumane way this administration has dismantled USAID. Families who have children but no home in the US to go back to because their job description includes overseas housing. Families who will be left without an income to pay their mortgage for the home they do own. Families who live overseas with special needs children whose disruption from a move will cause massive setbacks to their growth, or any child who just settled in a new school and home, an upheaval which could cause mental health trauma for the most resilient of kids. Foreign Service Officers who were just hired by the agency a month ago, relocated to D.C. with kids, bought a home, then were promptly placed on administrative leave (and face imminent firing). Employees who are this close to getting a pension, but not close enough, who’ve worked for USAID their entire careers, but don’t hit the necessary age to receive retirement benefits, how parts of the United States government is turning their back on them, on civil servants who’ve devoted their lives to our country. 

This person who was texting me condescended to say that she wouldn’t hold it against me that I was duped by a large organization. (My god. Talk to the hand.) What she of course has no knowledge of is that USAID is a pretty small organization, the underdogs to the much larger State Department. Many foreign service officers are former Peace Corps Volunteers. Do you, Reader, know how hard it is to be a PCV? I do. You show up in a village or foreign city somewhere and begin figuring it out solo. You plunge in and start helping others better their lives. Without pay. Some of these people are now part of the heart and soul of USAID. These are the people our country is turning its back on. 

Last week’s argument was about showing just how many bags of food equal a 40 million dollar Super Bowl ad. This week it's, Wait a minute. Is it OK to disregard our Constitution? If human rights or saving babies doesn’t resonate with you, do the unconstitutional actions of dismantling an agency without congressional approval resonate with you? What kind of banana republic have we found ourselves in and are willing to live with?  

Last week, a federal judge put a pause on sending home all Foreign Service Officers from overseas. A ruling regarding their fate, and perhaps the fate of worldwide aid, will be made on Friday. 

All I can stomach right now is Stanley Tucci’s writing. He makes me want to get in the kitchen, make spaghetti carbonara, and pour myself a big glug of wine. 

If there’s anyone left who still believes in doing the right thing for others, then please—for the love of humanity and dignity for all people, not just American people—please raise a glass with me.

Very proud of this man, and all the people I know and don’t know who work for USAID

These two pictures were taken by my husband on a site visit in Ethiopia