COLUMN: The danger of ‘Us vs. Them’
Sam Easter/Staff Reporter
Most Cold War-era action movies like to follow the same plot: “Watch out! The commies are coming for our women, children and Bibles!”
A little narrow-minded, sure, but I’m not complaining. Without communism, we wouldn’t have about half our Bond villains, “in Soviet Russia” jokes or “The Hunt for Red October.” Or those really cool tundra hats.
For the better part of the twentieth century, communism drove an awful lot of American culture and consciousness. It was Lex Luthor to our Superman, a challenge to our post-war moral authority that sustained it and gave it life for the next 45 years.
But what about now? Ever since the power of communist rhetoric dissipated, international politics has been left with a strange power vacuum. No longer do we have Superman versus Lex Luthor, but just Superman — the Iron Curtain fell, and suddenly the U.S.’s superhero status lost a big part of its impetus. Now the world, not to mention Superman himself, is trying to decide what he’s all about.
It’s interesting to watch how the U.S. has developed as its original claim to moral authority has evaporated. Compared to the globetrotting do-gooder we used to be — fighting evil (read: communism) wherever we might find it, we’re now forced to find another binary to support our superhero status.
The need to address how the U.S. sees itself is especially ascendant now as the Middle East begins to coalesce into a ‘bloc’; a nuclear Iran and an unfriendly Syria, not to mention a perennially surly Pakistan, don’t make the State Department’s life easier, and the East-West binary it’s beginning to create is hauntingly similar to Cold War styles of thought.
I’m not wary of keen foreign policy or of dealing responsibly with Iran, Syria and Pakistan. I am very alarmed, though, by the thought that our legislators might begin to see the Middle East as a commonly allied enemy, because this does nothing but create an artificial division between us — one that distracts the U.S. from constructive projects in other areas, like education, green energy and space exploration.
If we get caught in a national need to define ourselves as the enemy of some foreign ‘ism’ or allow ourselves to get caught in the need to live some kind of us-versus-them national narrative, the country makes a wrong turn. We condemn ourselves to a divisive process that can set good, problem-solving diplomacy back a generation.
The people of the U.S. need to realize the Middle East is properly understood as a group of individual countries, as intricate cultures with unique diplomatic needs — not as our next Lex Luthor.
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Sam Sinister wrote:
” Most Cold War-era action movies like to follow the same plot: “Watch
out! The commies are coming for our women, children and Bibles! A little narrow-minded, sure, but I’m not complaining. Without
communism, we wouldn’t have about half our Bond villains, “in Soviet
Russia” jokes or “The Hunt for Red October.” Or those really cool tundra
hats.”
Funny, eh? And, it is not even Saturday morning cartoon time. Let me pause here and add a number for perspective. 100-150 million. That is the number of souls killed in the 20th century by communist controlled governments. Under the control of the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong 70 million Chinese died. Between 1923-1953 Russian Communist leader Stalin between 20-60 million Russian citizens and foreigners. And to think the United States has only murdered 50 million unborn children, but we are catching up as one of the most murderous political systems in human history. But I digress. Sam Sinister like most deluded democrats ignore the unspeakable horrors of communism and the great political and military sacrifices during the Cold War era that were made to protect not only our nation from the atrocities of Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro and the recently departed Dear Leader of North Korea who staved to death 2-4 million of his own people in the 1990′s, but countless other nations in western Europe, Asia and central and south America. Now, Sam Sinister and his cast of communist sympathizers bring their same psychotic democrat party world view of international relationships to the middle east. And just as they did during the Cold War era as they looked the other way while people were being enslaved and murdered my the tens of millions, they are intellectually arguing the viability of religious and political system that enslaves women and persecutes any religious or political group that does not submit to the the tenets of Islam. North Africa is a brutal killing ground because of this evil religious doctrine and Sinister Sam and company refuse to see the marked similarities between the 20th century expansion of world communism and the 21st century expansion of Wahhabism. Well, Sam Sinister, like Stalin, you will learn that Hitler was a liar too…
Sam Sinister:
Put your heart and mind around these numbers . These are the approximate numbers of Russian deaths during WW2:
”27 millions, or recently the number 26.5 million has appeared. The best
research shows somewhat over 8 million military losses, added to those
are 3.3 or so POW’s who died in German captivity, thus bringing the
number to over 11 million, the rest were civilian deaths or partisan.
There are further breakdowns, for example 2 million died of hunger on
the Soviet ‘homefront’ etc.
” Want some advice Sam ? Grow UP!