We Are The World: Choose Your Own Nationalist Adventure

WE ARE THE WORLD:
CHOOSE YOUR OWN NATIONALIST ADVENTURE

As I was looking over the morning headlines, I began to realize that if you want to talk foreign policy all you have to do is treat all stories you hear in the media like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” children’s book.

It is as if R.L. Stine has written out the news stories of the day and that most of them are just begging us to choose what kind of nationalistic crusade we want our soldiers to prepare for.

Anymore, many of the stories that we are reading are molded perfectly to create a problem-reaction-solution mind set with many options that are suggested for the solution. Many of the options available include the use of the military and each time we read or choose to hear another option, it winds up taking us to the ultimate choice which is military force that no longer is a potential option but a desirable option.

Every “Choose Your Own Nationalist Adventure” story begins with a number of faceless and useless neo-Cons and war hawks meeting in Washington about an intelligence report:

You are the president in this story and you are at a big table with all of the typical advisers present you hear that…

A: Iran has reached its 20 % enrichment “red line“.

B: The destabilization of Ukraine and Crimea has failed and the American people have lost interest in the idea of war and the name-calling aimed at President Putin.

C: A terrorist bombing in China has killed dozens of people and has wounded others.

D: Boko Haram has kidnapped over 200 girls. Boko Haram is a terrorist organization and this incident seems to ring familiar with the Joseph Kony 2012 story where an African warlord would steal innocent boys and recruit them for the “Lord’s Resistance Army” – Kony is a Christian, Boko Haram is a Muslim organization.

Now, choose your nationalistic adventure.

As the President you choose D.

Now you are confronted with what you should do, choose your nationalistic adventure:

A: Condemn the actions immediately.

B: Send Oprah or Jesse Jackson to meet with the leaders.

C: Deploy soldiers to patrol areas where they have operated in the past.

D: Use airstrikes to attack their bases and hideouts.

You choose C, and then go back to read what would happen if you chose D.

The mobilization of military troops by the privileged Americans to save “helpless Africans” is not a new story. We are actually very familiar with this narrative. We remember “We Are The World,” a song about feeding starving Africans. We were all aware of Live Aid, and several other American celebrities who pose as heroes urging people to throw money at governments to save something, when most can’t even save themselves.

You are then offered another choice.

You have to find a way to convince the American people that a military campaign is necessary in Africa in order to find these girls. Choose your nationalistic adventure:

A: You urge the United Nations to offer sanctions against Boko Haram.

B: You call David Letterman and ask him to do a sensitive-but-funny ‘Top Ten List‘ on his show to raise awareness of the 200 girls that are being held by the terrorists.

C: Even though Boko Haram’s links to Al Qaeda have been disputed, you use the connection to your advantage hoping the American people will forget that you supplied weapons to rebels in Syria with ties to Al Qaeda.

D. Urge your wife, the First Lady, to go on Twitter and post a selfie where she is holding up a handwritten note that says “Bring back our girls.” Now, you know that these girls aren’t even American and they are not necessarily ours, but urge the first lady to “sell” it.

You choose D.

It’s not that hard to sell anyone on the idea of murder, preemptive strikes or allowing for the deaths of innocents because of some feigned empathy that is conjured for political reasons or religious convictions.

The political environment of America is conservative; however, that does not mean that a conservative view does not allow the encroachment of emotional blackmail to get the desired result and anyone who decides to question the motives of this world wide drama will most definitely be told that they are insensitive, racist or worse.

Even in the face of facts we wonder how the adventure is allowed to continue. We move through more paragraphs and headlines that are begging us to make a choice, giving us more and more reasons to go back to the other choices and see where we end up.

Suddenly, the plot thickens.

Your former Secretary of State decides to react to your wife’s hashtag politics by condemning the Nigerian government.

You realize that the reaction carries with it another example of the Washington D.C. “double standard” and your whole “Choose Your Own Nationalist Adventure” story will end quickly when everyone realizes this is more like a “Wag the Dog” scenario than a convincing narrative.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been right there condemning the activities of Boko Haram after the “duck faced” hashtag tweet by Michelle Obama.

During her tenure as Secretary of State, Clinton was warned in 2012 that the Boko Haram had been responsible for slaughtering hundreds of Christians as part of a brutal attempt to bring down the Nigerian government. As Boko Haram was doing its best to reduce the Christian population in Africa, Clinton did nothing and the State Department refused to add Boko Haram to a list of terrorist organizations despite massive pressure from Congress, the CIA and the FBI.

As we move along in the adventure book, you are still the president and now you have to make a decisive move to get people to ignore the fact that Hillary Clinton’s hollow support makes this all look like a straw man distraction.

Choose your nationalistic adventure:

A: Condemn the racist statements of Clippers owner Donald Sterling again.

B: Phone your buddy Jay-Z and ask him what got into Solange and tell him that you can have her detained under the new NDAA laws.

C: Tell Harry Reid to call a press conference and order him to make some lunatic statements about domestic terrorists, conspiracy theorists, and how the ‘Book of Mormon’ musical made him laugh so hard he broke a rib.

D: Consider asking someone to Photoshop a picture of Putin with some Boy Scouts.

You choose A.

However, you realize that the whole racism ruse is getting old and feel a little guilty about being such a hypocrite so you immediately ignore the plight of the veterans and the whole Russia mess and become a champion of American Sports.

This includes hanging out with Super Bowl Champions Seattle Seahawks and the touring the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York to promote tourism and economic development.

Nothing breeds nationalism like baseball and national sports.

As a safe measure, you decide that your adventure is over and that it is time to wait until you find another fiction that you want to participate in. In the meantime, the ‘wag the dog’ scenario sickens and the media reports it like it is reality.

Reality, however, is far more abysmal.

President Barack Obama is redefining “nationalism.”

Aggressive nationalism has fueled the so-called necessity for military campaigns in the 20th century and it seems that President Obama can play on our nationalist feelings to have us jump into a triggering of Africom or the African command because “America is free and sometimes others who aren’t deserve the freedom we have.”

He wants us to believe that we love America so much that we want to invite everyone into the family and that nationalism is no longer love for one’s own country, but a love for a world order that we must enforce and encourage.

This type or “We Are the World” nationalism leads to unnecessary propaganda campaigns of “Bring back our girls” that we are told are “ours” or that when we look into their faces we somehow see our own daughters.

What?

Nationalism has always been defined loosely as being indifferent to what goes on outside your own country.

Nationalism was always “America First,” but now it is about more than that. Nationalism is now for the world and how “We Are The World.”

Is it all ringing familiar with that song and campaign?

We aren’t American nationalists, we are being brainwashed into becoming world nationalists. We heed the call of the world — not the call of Americans that are victims of human trafficking, or poverty, or even injustice.

As world policemen and as the nationalist order patrol, it is easy to create adventures where we are quick to develop a reason to attack other countries out love. We must find a reason to create “the other” that we can ridicule and use as a scapegoat in order to develop a strategy to secure a nation that we see has some instability.

We are there to create the illusion that we believe in America so much that we are willing to share it – by force if necessary. We believe in our nationalistic crusades so much that we will exploit the economic deprivation, corruption, and authoritarian governments that exist in places that are not like us – that are not part of the world order.

We want to offer these countries a sense of identity because we are under the delusion that they don’t have one and it is best to offer them an identity of being broken and then fixed by our appointed contractors.

Welcome to the new nationalist adventure where the United States of America wants to be the conscience of the world, the world’s Jiminy Cricket that is loaded for bear, ready to install a puppet government with strings attached to the world controllers.

It worked for George W. Bush, why not Barack Obama?

Bush used American nationalism and bumper sticker patriotism after the 9/11 to push the world empire’s occupation of two Muslim countries.

He called it a crusade.

In the middle of a storm of unbelievable rage, Bush capitalized on the public’s pain, confusion and fear to invade two countries, one of which – Iraq – had no relationship with al-Qaeda or the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In the process of disguising our love for freedom with the excuse for killing, civil liberties in America suffered, the constitution was reduced to just a nice wall hanging and the dialogue was opened for the socialism solution.

Now we are living with an administration that has done nothing to curb our overextended ability to create conflict, exhaust budgets, and to halt foreign military adventures that do nothing to protect America.

The United States should not be expected to quell every civil war, resolve every conflict and rescue oppressed children in countries most people can’t find on maps. We also shouldn’t have to pretend like we are the babysitters when Russia, China, and North Korea aren’t behaving or playing nice in the sandbox.

Our so-called nationalistic ideals and our love for the American dream has paced us in a position to exactly the opposite of what we are supposed to do.

True nationalism would dictate that we should be isolationists avoiding these various military campaigns; however, in situations like what is happening in Ukraine, our tax dollars are being used to subsidize movements whose lineage can be traced back to the Nazi brownshirts of the 1930’s.

Nationalism is a potent force when used correctly. Such as when it is used to better the lifestyles of Americans who wish to pay attention to what America needs, rather than what the world needs.

Perhaps we can escape the sick attempt at creating allegiance to the new world order and start focusing on what can be done to secure the future of our country.

Nationalism is for autonomy and self-determination, not for a world order.

Source: http://www.groundzeromedia.org/we-are-the-world-choose-your-own-nationalist-adventure/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=we-are-the-world-choose-your-own-nationalist-adventure