These readings were really interesting to me and made me think a lot about the present and future of America. First, in Zinn’s chapter, he doesn’t explicitly say it but he touches on American values that are still so present today, almost 2o years after 9/11. Throughout history, it is clear that in order to prove American patriotism citizens and the government alike have to embody extreme, toxic nationalism which in turn leads to xenophobia or prejudice against people from other countries. Our idea of patriotism is so skewed that it is contingent on seeing anyone who is not American as less than. This applies to the idea that we learned earlier in the year, where we take difference to mean inferiority and this process thus justifies us dehumanizing them and treating other human beings however we want. This happened in the Vietnam War and clearly, the American population did not learn from these past injustices when the US as a whole promoted the War on Terror. I obviously recognize that it was in response to 9/11, however it is different to retaliate against a group of terrorists than to bomb innocent civilians and children. It is crazy to me that given the pushback from the Vietnam War and the horrors that stemmed from it, the media and civilians alike were ready just to do the same if not worse things to another group of people. It is clear that America has not learned from their past mistakes in the slightest, and it is just a constant rotation of us enacting injustices on civilizations that we perceive as “other”. These injustices happen domestically and externally, and the root of it has to do with people we perceive as other we then think it is justified to treat them badly. Everyone in the US plays a role in this ignorance of history and we will continue to burn our bridges with other nations and within our own if we do not take a hard look at history.
The quotes by the US colonel really resonated with me. “We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations.” Further, he said that, “instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send them to rebuild infrastructure, supply clean water, feed starving children.” This would instill reciprocity in our relationships between us and developing countries instead of this unbalanced form of imperialism that we currently have. Our foreign policy is contingent on force and military pressures, and this can only continue for so long. We are not going to create long-lasting relations with other countries if we just use them to exploit their goods without giving them anything in return.
I liked your point about proving your own nationalism meant getting on board with discrimination and prejudice toward other people. It almost seems like people would think less of you as almost anti-american if you didn’t agree with them on it.
I liked how you brought up the problems getting involved in the Middle East has caused. Our government has created even more unnecessary hatred toward Muslim people in exchange for oil and natural resources.