“Racism is a close cousin to nationalism, as America has been reminded. They both depend on scapegoating ‘the other;’ on the idea as Kipling put it that, ‘All nice people, like us, are We, and everyone else is They.”[i] We have previously made the point that belief in the other is the starting point for much of the violence in the human community.
The other is an aspect of a dualistic worldview which leads to our self-destruction. A closely-related belief is nationalism, also part of a dualistic worldview. A policy so foreign to America’s professed ideals originated in our belief in these two illusions, namely nationalism and the other.
“War has always been cruel and squalid, but it’s the modern world that has made it so fantastically bloody. The Industrial Revolution gave states the ability to manufacture ever more lethal weapons on ever greater scales, and nationalism turned populations into armies, blurring the distinction between soldiers and civilians. Nationalism provided the motivation in the powder keg and the Industrial Revolution the means.”[ii]
Beliefs such as nationalism and the existence of the other often result in fear and paranoia. Fear of Communism led the U.S. to become entangled in conflicts around the world leading to catastrophic destruction and loss of life as well as long-term psychological trauma at home and abroad.
One example is American involvement in the “civil war” in El Salvador. “A second uprising, beginning in 1980, led to 12 years of civil war between the Salvadoran military supported by the United States and the armed forces of the opposition. The war displaced more than one million Salvadorans, with half taking refuge in the United States. After the war, social and economic reforms promised during the peace negotiations were abandoned, and until 2016 amnesty laws protected the perpetrators of war crimes, the majority committed by the military. Civilians, and combatants from both sides of the conflict, struggled to survive in a deteriorating environment.”[iii]
The delusion of nationalism is mutually exclusive to the Truth of Oneness which explains how we are all inter-connected, inter-related and inter-dependent. Oneness explains why toxic behaviors are easily spread around the communities of the Global Village as the recent pandemic demonstrated. “In the United States, young Salvadoran war refugees defended themselves from urban street gangs by forming gangs themselves, and when the government expeditiously deported them, gang life became a U.S. export, seeding criminal enterprises such as narco-trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and money laundering. In the absence of serious economic development and domestic security, Salvadoran parents despairing of keeping their children fed and safe, sent them north, until whole families were fleeing on foot to the U.S. border. These families are often referred to as ‘migrants,’ but in truth, they are the most recent refugees of the war and its aftermath, victims of a conflict that could not have been prosecuted without the support of the United States, the country that is now refusing to grant the vast majority of them asylum.”[iv]
Nothing is so foreign to an individual or a nation than the absence of compassion in the treatment of a neighbor.
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Supplemental Reading: Nationalism, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 2
#14 Policy So Foreign
[i] Cohen, Roger. “Au Revoir but Not Adieu.” The New York Times. November 15, 2020, p. 3.
[ii] Filkins, Dexter. “What Is It Good For? The New York Times Book Review. November 29, 2020, p. 8.
[iii] Forche, Carolyn. “Making the Bones Speak.” The New York Times Book Review. November 29, 2020, p. 12.
[iv] Ibid.
