And Trump's Gifts to the Girls Of The World Keep Piling Up

Added later:  Shortly after I published this post, CNN reported that the program will not be killed, after all.  Probably the power of my critical post?  Nah.

 Original post begins here:


Our Dear Leader in his great wisdom is canceling the program Michelle Obama championed: "Let Girls Learn," aimed at facilitating the education and empowerment of adolescent girls in the poorest countries.  Though some aspects of that program might continue (not betting on that happening), the program itself is now dead.

To cancel all those programs which I see as absolutely necessary for future peace, economic sufficiency in the poorer countries, the prevention of vast migrant floods into the wealthier countries and the reduction of future terrorism* is so short-sighted as to make us blind.

But that's what Trump's white supremacist base desires, I guess.

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* The norms about marriage in some countries where extreme Islamic terrorism finds fertile ground stipulate that a man must earn enough to marry, because a woman should stay at home and should not be educated.  When you combine that with a very real lack of any well-paying jobs for young men, well, they are expected not to have a love partner for sex until they are ancient old men, and alternatives such as terrorism will begin to look more alluring, especially with terrorist organizations such as ISIS who promise those young men as much sex as raping the women of the vanquished or buying sex slaves can give them.

I grant you that this is not the major way in which terrorism is created, but surely women's empowerment and equal partnership in those countries will both reduce the pressures for terrorism and increase economic well-being.

Yet the Trump administration seems adamant to contribute to a situation most likely to result in wars.