The monster in the mirror

In today’s world of jet travel, international financial entanglement between nations, and the blending of cultures, nationalism becomes just a form of racism and xenophobia, cloaked in a flag. ‘Nation’, at least as nationalists refer to it, is in fact, illusion, an attempt to feel safe amidst a rapidly changing, scary, ever shrinking world. Lines in the sand as the tide washes in. 

  

These nationalists seem to prefer fascism as their form of governance. Blind allegiance to a leader, a father figure (almost always male) whose instincts, according to him, supersede law, science, even reality itself - his instincts always right. Pretty simple, and if you can convince yourself that it’s true, pretty reassuring.  

 

Fueled by ignorance, fear, and nationalism, fascism is a rigid, black and white approach to nation, to life. But despite knowing, at least deep down, that fascism ultimately fails by its own rigid limitations, it is nevertheless too tempting, too xenophobic, to hate filled, and too 'safe', for nationalists not to have grasped at it, at least for the short term, all throughout history. The world as it really is just all too much - they haven’t the knowledge or critical thinking skills to properly deal with it - and so they grasp at false, fabricated simplicity through exclusion, hate, and altered reality. 

  

Up until recently we thought of fascism as an arcane historical relic. Mussolini and Hitler modern day aberrations, most likely the result of someone briefly opening the gates of hell. How could such a limited, ignorant, self-confining approach to life be possible amidst our ever-shrinking world, our ever more literate population – with the greatest access to information ever before seen on earth? 

  

And yet 74 million Americans voted for a fascist in 2020 whose successful election would have meant the end of our democratic republic. Why? 

  

The reasons are many and complex but are all centered on ignorance, and an inability for critical thinking in an age of information. Today’s world is a scary world. The blurring of borders and traditions disrupts the comfort found in familiarity and old ways. Combine that with a deluge of unchecked information from the internet, and a willingness of certain media outlets to distort reality and to outright lie in order to enhance profit, and the curtain begins to pull back. A lot of these people begin with a lack of knowledge of their world, and an inability to critically assess things even if they had the knowledge. Now create a separate reality laced with fear and people become capable of almost anything. 

Ignorance and false reality are at the heart of America’s divisiveness. If we take the most ardent racists and ignorant xenophobes and immerse them say with an Iraqi or Iranian family for six months with no hope of escape – they will come to no longer fear or hate them as a people. They will welcome them to their homes with open arms. They will have learned these people are humans, with the same dreams, thoughts, hopes, as themselves. That in fact, they are human, and they matter. A little knowledge is a beautiful thing. 

And if that’s true then it is ignorance, fear, and false reality that fuels our hate, our divisiveness, our nationalism. And if that is true – who else do we ultimately blame but ourselves? All of us. For we are a society that has become focused on materialism, consumerism, wealth, and profit instead of knowledge, reason, and truth. 

These last four years were but a small peek at the ultimate price to be paid for such a society. Ignorance, fear, hate, divineness, all manipulated, bought, sold, and encouraged in a rudderless society adrift on an ocean of selfishness, greed, materialism, and profit. It will be the end of our democracy, perhaps even the end of us, unless we fundamentally change and do so very soon.

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