I like to see the best in people. I like to believe that, at their core, all people are capable of good.

Perhaps that's what has gotten me into trouble. Perhaps it's because of that route of thinking that I feel betrayed. I feel lied to. I finally feel like the wool has been pulled off my eyes and I'm seeing the world for what it truly is.

I used to believe that such hatred and contempt for a group of people because of a specific attribute was a thing of the past. I could not fathom how anyone born in this day and age could be so hateful and bigoted. I could not imagine anyone seeing the horrors of this world, seeing the spread of fear and pain, and still, through all the suffering, harbor their own resentments.

But that is still the case.

I am not ignorant. I am aware of the struggles and plights that have come to the surface over the past few years, from the LGBTQ community to the dangers facing African-Americans, to the injustices done in places like Flint, MI. However, recently the last straw was drawn. It centers around the Millennium Challenge Corporation and their recent decision to spend $100 million to help fund education in Morocco, part of a $450 million initiative to increase education and raise employability. This means the federal US government will be helping poverty stricken families in other countries send their children to school for the first time. Where's the harm in that?

Apparently, everywhere.

On social media outlets, I have seen people bless this act as wonderful. But then, I've seen people berate and demean this as disloyal to America, as a mistake made by voting for people based on superfluous extremities, and even as the crazed idea of a power hungry black woman. Yes. They blame Michelle Obama and say that because of her race she would rather fund education for ethnic children than our own citizens. They say that because of her gender, she is incapable of making the correct decision, and that this is what happens when people like her get elected.

This fantastic initiative, funding education for 100,000 children in a country where 34 million people (1/3 of the population) is illiterate and 41 percent of women are uneducated, somehow becomes a political ploy here. People turn the beauty of this plan into something dirty; they skew it to fit their standpoint, demeaning women, demeaning people of color, all to get across a political point that starving children in other countries could give a rat's ass about.

This is not a battle of whose life is worse, because there are no winners there. This is not about using that money to fix our problems--someone even specifically questioned why those millions of dollars were not given to my home state of Illinois (c'mon, really?). This is about using the wealth and good grace that we as a nation have been given and using it to better the world. Yes, we have our problems, but our first-world struggles can wait. It is time to go out and head to those countries we only ever hear about on the news because of some infectious disease or some terrorist attack or some other travesty, and start spreading good.

And so I've come full circle, back to where I started. Before witnessing it with my own eyes, I never would have imagined that people I knew, friends and family, could be capable of such contempt over a third world country receiving money to benefit their education system. I never would have thought that people could be so angry over such small things. I never thought such bigotry in the face of so many tragedies, could be possible.

But it is.

It is because of my ignorance, and the ignorance of others, that this bigotry, this hatred, this contempt, is flowing. It is because of my lack of action that those around me still hold onto these selfish mindsets and stereotypes. It is because of my idleness, and even possible a wanting to believe it's not true, that this has happened. It is this ignorance that breeds fear and rage and leaves room for monsters to sneak in. It is this ignorance that creates monsters like Omar Mateen, like Adam Lanza, like Dylann Roof.

Ignorance is not bliss. If anything, the ignorance of the world is destroying bliss. It is festering and growing in dark and forgotten places, and then it is brought into the light in the form of disaster. I never thought that someone growing up in this world could hate anyone for something superfluous or superficial.

I was wrong. And for that, the world suffered.