We are living in a society that values Pharisees. The more ostentatiously you can show you care about something you are supposed to care about—anything that's as far removed from you as possible—the more social capital you have. Guaranteed popularity and respect. By caring about anything but yourself or your ethnic group, you are the paragon of virtue in American society.
Think of how many college students go abroad for "service learning" in African countries or the Caribbean. There is poverty in our own country. And yet, there are no bourgeois points for helping Appalachian whites or Detroit blacks. You have to go to a land of "noble savages," where "imperialism" has created oppression that only your 4-5 months of dicking around and destroying the local subsistence economy with foreign aid can save.
If you are going to take on the suffering of others as your own, why don't you start with your neighbors and fan out from there? Oh right, because if you help people faaaaar away you can't be tainted with self-interest—they can't reciprocate. Truly the greatest altruist of all.
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