Things were pretty bad in Haiti from a socio-political perspective but the earthquake made things ten thousand times worse in a more tangible sense.
I don't quite get how you are making the contrast, because poverty (which is the way in which things were bad from a "socio-political perspective")
is tangible. But I agree that the earthquake multiplied suffering.
On the one hand, yes we could probably all stand to do more on a global scale. However, that knowledge isn't much help to a country which has just had its infrastructure all but entirely destroyed. What they need right now is less debate and a lot more aid.
I don't think Kieffer is saying that giving aid to Haiti is up for debate.
For me, I get uncomfortable at all the things people post on facebook because it seems to come from a position of, "These people are poor, therefore they need our help." On it's face, there's nothing wrong with that. It does imply that the fact that this is occurring in Haiti is especially tragic (as opposed to if this happened in, say, a country in Western Europe) because of how terrible the situation has been there already. Again, nothing wrong with recognizing that. However, the implicit assumption seems to be that Haiti was poor before this earthquake Just Because -- some countries just happen to be poor, and there's no why. In other words, there doesn't seem to be any awareness that our (U.S., anyway) government is in many ways culpable for how vulnerable they were to this natural catastrophe.
Uh, I guess to simplify it even more crudely, it's in many ways 'our' (ergh) fault that they (oh I guess that should be in quotes too) need 'our' help so badly now.
Does that make sense?
On the other hand I'm pretty young so I probably still feel the need to criticize the people around me so I can feel smart.