Doesn't make much sense, does it? Homeless go w/out eating. Elderly go w/out needed medicines. Mentally ill go w/out treatment. Troops go w/out proper equipment. Veterans go w/out benefits that were promised. Yet we donate billions to other countries before helping our own first. 1% will re-post and 99% won't. Have the guts to re-post this. I KNOW I'm in the 1%, are you
This is an example of many status messages of its type that regularly appear in my FB news feed.
Why are people from other countries assumed to be less worthy of help?
I really dislike messages like this - they're divisive, rely on false choices, and encourage empty nationalism at the expense of human decency. The needy in this country aren't doing without because we help other people, they're doing without because politicians and talking heads have a vested interest in keeping people angry at each other so we don't get angry with them.
I also find it interesting that not a single person on my friends' list who reposts messages like this has ever bothered sharing links to my work, let alone actually contributing to the site. I’m sitting here wondering if I can keep the lights on and the rent paid for the next few months before my financial aid comes in for my next semester, and here are all these people self-righteously complaining about how much we don’t “help our own first,” but apparently I’m not “our own.” 
It strikes me funny that people will rail about not "helping our own first," but when I make a 20-minute documentary about being homeless and ask for people's help to keep a roof over my head and enable me to continue doing what I do, suddenly people forget how to share – not even donate, just share the link so it will find people who are willing and able to help...yet these same people will post indignant memes about how terrible it is to help a human being in need because they're not American.
How about instead of asking why we help them dirty furrners and not ourselves, asking why we're willing to spent $200 a month on cable television or $600 on a set of low-profile rims or $100 on a manicure, but we can't be bothered to send ten bucks to a local charity or someone we know, who is trying to do a good thing? Why do more of us vote on American Idol than in our national elections. Why do we call ourselves a "christian nation" but then turn around and ask "why should I have to pay for some lazy welfare queen’s health insurance?”
I wonder if it ever occurs to these people that if we weren’t so hell-bent on electing crooks who lie to us and avoiding anything that sounds like “taxes,” a guy like me could concentrate on creating substantive material instead of always being in a panic to raise money to live?