Reply #51: It's a classic fascist tactic to pit one group of oppressed people against [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

another. And the idea, here, I think, is to destroy labor protections and fairness--and to squeeze everybody but the super-rich--in both countries.

I'm way left on the immigration issue. I think most Mexicans have a lot more right to be here than I or my white-skinned brethren and sisteren do. Our forebears came and stole the country right away from them, and even those who came later, themselves as immigrants, capitalized on the that original theft.

And I'm seeing the whole thing--this multicultural society (quite a marvel, I think)--and the porous border with Mexico, as an organism of people and communities. I don't see it the way bureaucrats and flag-waving chauvinists see it. And I think that there really IS something to Mexican family values--sense of family and community responsibility and connectedness to each other, to nature and to the spiritual forces of the universe--that many of us have lost, and need to recover. THAT contribution to U.S. culture is of higher value to me than any weighings of the financial balance sheet (which, if done honestly, always favors the host government of immigrants, legal and illegal).

However, I want to talk about nationhood in a different context--that relates back to this context in roundabout but very important way. About 40 years ago, I read a 3-part article in the New Yorker about corporate plans to destroy national governments, here and elsewhere--to weaken them, to erode their powers to regulate business and to tax business and the rich for the common good, and ultimately to replace the state by corporate rule. I can't remember who wrote it. But it sure was prescient!

Some associate "nationalism" with war, and also with excluding other people on bigoted grounds. That is certainly how the nation states evolved, out of the original idea of a monarchy--and it was certainly a component of Hitler's rise (although not limited to that situation as to war). And there are also economic aspects to it--a country protecting its own interests, and, theoretically, the interests of its own people, as to trade policies, business regulation, resources, travel, etc. These latter have been one of the main focuses of the Corporate Rulers, some of whom are US-based, and all of whom are now global corporate predators, roaming the world like pirates, looking for weakly protected resources and cheap labor, and for governments that are easily bullied and corrupted.

So, while nationalism has some militaristic components--that can be somewhat benign or horrible, depending on people and circumstances--the nation-state is STILL the only entity we have by which we can protect ourselves from rampant predation by essentially stateless entities with enormous riches and power.

The US is rather unique among nation states, because it is so big, and so multicultural. "A nation of immigrants" (that is very unique, in modern history). Most other nations are held together in part by their biological and cultural similarity--they are smaller; they have more homogeneous populations. The US does not have that glue; it has the rule of law, the Constitution, a tradition of freedom and tolerance, and, to some extent, the English language--and perhaps also its riches, its great natural resources--to hold this vast country together in the absence of any single indigenous culture. We have the American culture that is promulgated by the movies, and by corporate TV, but not everyone belongs to it. We have lots and lots of subcultures. This needs to be taken into consideration, when the previous immigrants--all of us--start dissing the newest immigrants, whoever they may be. The same thing was done to the Irish--and with every other large immigration to this country--as is being done to the Mexicans. "We don't want that riffraff here!" It's almost laughable--if it weren't so sad. But the Mexicans are unique in that they are the one group that has a right to be here, but for the artificial boundaries of the nation state, created very recently here, in the Western Hemisphere (compared, say, to the borders of India, or China, or France or Italy). To the extent that Mexicans or other Latin Americans carry indigenous blood, this had been THEIR land for over 10,000 years!

This latter truth may be why Latin American immigrants are so threatening to some. The kind of white Americans who are never comfortable in their own skins, and who flag-wave and rail about the immigration of the brown, may feel more than a bit insecure, in this mostly brown hemisphere, and mostly brown world. They are to be pitied, in a way--and also fought. What idiocy! The Latin Americans are the most democratic people in the world right now. THEY are the future. And they are showing US the way out of our difficulties here, with our Corporate Rulers.

In Bolivia, for instance, where they just elected their first indigenous Indian as president, Evo Morales--a socialist and ally of Hugo Chavez and of the many other new leftist leaders in South America--they started by throwing Bechtel out their country, for privatizing the water and then jacking up the prices to the poor. Full scale, organized, grass roots revolt. Goodbye, Bechtel! Then they elected Evo--who campaigned with a wreath of coca leaves around this neck (sacred plant in the Andes).

Grass roots movements like that have been spurred by electoral reform--a long term project of the OAS and other election groups--as well as by community-based organization over a long period of time. Democracy, in other words, is happening in South America.

The US has been taken over and exploited by the very rich, and by global corporate predators, who have been using the power of the US for their own ends, to further enrich themselves. Prior to the last few decades, that purpose of the rich has been tempered by the purposes of the poor, in our democratic country with its "balance of powers." When the oligarchs got out of control, the labor movement fought back and eventually won good labor laws, and decent wages, creating a powerful middle class. All that is under serious assault here, and has been since Reagan. The global predators have now found it convenient to outsource huge numbers of jobs to places like Mexico, the Marianas, Cambodia and wherever they can find NATIONAL governments that can't or won't protect their own people, or who permit egregious exploitation of imported workers.

So, you see the dilemma. We NEED a strong national government to protect us--that is, a binding union of people, land and government--as long as there are global corporate predators in the world. Right now, in the U.S., these predators are eating their own--us. But, theoretically, anyway, we could throw them off. We could de-charter them (if they are chartered here in the states). We could dismantle them, and seize their assets for the common good--and get them off of EVERYONE's backs. We could ban them from doing business here. We could tell Halliburton, and Bechtel, and the Carlyle Group, and Chevron, and Chase Bank to go take a flying leap. That's the power of the sovereignty of the people--banded together as a nation.

OR, we need some new ENTITY. I don't know what it would be. But there is value to a strong national government--is all I'm saying--as long as there is agreement between people and government about what government is FOR. And democracy is certainly the best--and may be the only--way of reaching that agreement. And to have a strong national government, you have to have NATIONALISM: a belief in the components of the nation, its people, its laws, its ideas, its character. It's not at all a bad thing, necessarily, to see yourself as part of a larger community or nation. You don't necessarily have to despise others as less than you, in order to identify what YOU are a part of, what YOU believe in, and what YOU support and would fight for.

It's only when such belief and support is exploited and misused--generally, when the will of the people has been thwarted, and when demagogues take control--that nationalism is bad, in and of itself.

Take Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Argentina, for instance--and, indeed, almost any So. American country you could name right now. "Nationalism," to this new leftist revolution that is sweeping South America (also in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay), means SELF-DETERMINATION and INDEPENDENCE from the US. It means being proud of being Bolivians or Venezuelans. But it does NOT mean hatred of your neighbors; on the contrary, these countries are cooperating with each other.

And none of this (the need to be a nation) means that we can't create a special arrangement with Mexico, because of the unique circumstances of our history. But the arrangement would have to be premised on BOTH our governments curtailing global corporate predators, and forbidding the exploitation of labor. Both would have to agree and cooperate on social services. And perhaps, with a new gov't in Mexico--led by the leftist mayor of Mexico City (who is ahead in the presidential polls)--and a new gov't here (after we reform our election system, and throw the Bushite electronic voting corporations out), that could be achieved.

It's a time for new thinking--not for old protectionist patterns and war patterns. But we need to be careful of aiding the Corporate Rulers by opposing the good elements of nationalism and strong government. If the nation that we wave the flag for takes care of its own people, truly advocates for peace and justice, defends the defenseless, and extends the hand of cooperation to others, it's a good nation and it's okay to be proud of belonging to it and supporting it. And that kind of a nation--a good nation--may be the best we can do, for the moment, as to human organization.

"The time of the people has come." --Evo Morales