They’ve got the wrong comparison when they (voters, politicians, and commentators) complain that while the Biden administration is handing Ukraine billions in military support, it is only handing out a mean-spirited few hundred dollars to the victims of the massive fires on Maui. Those two bags of money are from different buckets – and have no relevance to each other.

The more apt complaint would be to contrast the billions soaked up by the illegal migration scandal v Maui support. It’s not only closer to home, it’s a more appropriate comparison. Illegal migrants (illigrants?) flooding into America are getting greater levels of cash and support than US citizens and residents on Maui. A study found illegal immigrants are a net consumer of taxpayer benefits worth more than US$100 billion a year, not including the cost of enforcing the border. While federal benefits are supposed to be off-limits, in practice many are not. More than 25,000 undocumented workers receive subsidised housing, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Children receive free education and most qualify for English lessons and free school breakfast and lunch.

‘I think they ought to spend a lot more money at home and take care of our own people,’ said Steven Whitley, a GOP voter in Tupper Lake, a small town in northern New York. Whitley told NPR in August that the US has no business intervening in a conflict on the opposite side of the world. He rejected the idea Ukraine is a democracy and an ally worth protecting.

There is certainly a valid argument that the US$700 offer to Maui households by Biden is almost insulting. It cannot be justified by his pathetic claim of fake empathy by reference to his kitchen fire that was extinguished in 20 minutes.

If I were a Maui fire victim whose home has been burned down, I would draw Biden’s attention to the multi-faceted welfare given to the entitled illegal migrants who can’t even be bothered to keep their free accommodation clean and tidy. One New York City hotel staffer sounded the alarm on how illegal immigrants have trashed a once-luxury hotel and turned it into a chaotic ‘mess’ at the expense of American taxpayers.

How much have these ‘illigrants’, an estimated 5 million of them under Biden and the only ones in America above the law it seems, cost American taxpayers?

As for the broader issue, the absurd (and impractical) notion that the US should simply stop helping Ukraine against the Russian aggressor – the illegal aggressor – it is hardly arguable that it’s a territorial conflict that has nothing to do with the US. What, like the 1939 German invasion of Poland was? Overall, polls show American support for financial aid and weapons for Ukraine remains strong. But surveys conducted over the past year show a major shift among Republicans.

Had we not permitted the United Nations to grow from good intentions to dangerous delinquency, the free world might have had the kind of global policeman that could help keep the peace, protect the weak, and stand guard over democracies.

There is nothing more dangerous than a corrupt or incompetent policeman who is relied upon but makes things worse by failing in their duty.

Meanwhile, the UN’s focus is on the dark fantasy of global boiling. That Time cover photo of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (June 2019) standing knee-deep in the supposedly rising seas of the world is unintentional satire: it is the climate alarmist mantra that is rising and boiling.

But back to Maui v Ukraine. The different buckets to which I refer above, help to separate the wildfires on Maui, which do not represent a threat to the world and the sovereignty of a nation. It would be a damning contrivance to see aid to Ukraine as a partisan issue.

Abandoning Ukraine to Putin’s invasion force would be akin to failing to help a drowning man or woman because he/she was not a relative.

That kind of isolationist attitude has no place in a compassionate and multi-connected world, in my humble but defensible opinion.