Retreating down G Street, the PR considered the white girl with red hair. Was she being held against her will? Likely she was a junkie, in some sort of long-term relationship with the tall man, who served as her pimp. Who had she been before she was the white girl with red hair? The PR reminded himself that the white girl with red hair had been a whore in that tent long before he arrived and would be a whore in that tent long after he left. All of these people had been living thus before he arrived and would continue living thus long after he went home. Anything he could do for them would only comprise a small push in a positive direction before the tremendous momentum of their negative tendencies reasserted itself. The PR was put in mind of a single shot from a gun being fired into a massive orbiting planet.
Still, what would happen if he decided to abandon the Study and commit all of his resources to the sole purpose of extracting the white girl with red hair from that tent and getting her into whatever treatment program was required? Wasn’t it possible—wasn’t it, in fact, likely, given his resources—that he could effect a positive change in the life of the white girl with red hair? And if so, wasn’t it, at some level, a moral requirement that he do so? That is: By continuing down G Street, the white girl with the red hair becoming less real with his every step, was he not essentially consenting to her continued presence back there in the tent, waiting to be sold, by the tall man, to anyone who happened by? Wasn’t he, in a sense, not only allowing that to happen but assuring that it would happen?
Yes.
Yes, he was.
"A moral inquiry" (George Saunders, excerpt from "Tent City USA")