Politics

One of my courses this semester is Third World Politics. To set the groundwork for the course, during the first two weeks, the professor has given us a brief history of the third world (or global south, as sociologists now call it, as opposed to the global north, a.k.a. first world). From the brief history we’ve been given, I can already tell that this course is going to be depressing.

I’ve known for a long while, somewhere deep in my mind, that not all in the world is as, for lack of a better word, nice as things are for me and many of my online friends. We all live in developed countries, we all have the internet, none of us are starving, we’re attending college or have already graduated. Obviously, not everyone in the world lives in such a setting. In fact, I came to find out that only about 15% of the world lives in such conditions. The rest live in conditions that we in the “first world” would find horrible and unbearable.

I think most of us in the “global north” know that things aren’t so great elsewhere. In fact, most of us know that elsewhere on this little rock of ours, things suck pretty bad for a lot of people. However, the mind has a way of suppressing such overwhelming thoughts. We might acknowledge such problems when we see a starving kid in Africa or Ethiopia on our televisions, but most of the time, you and I are stuck in our own little world, oblivious to the problems and suffering of others.

The first two weeks of my Third World Politics course has been a real eye opener. Having never really paid much attention to the third world or studied its history, I didn’t truly understand why things are the way they are. I knew the nations of the global south were in pretty dire straits, but I didn’t understand how they had reached that point.

These past two weeks have shed some light on that for me, and learning of the causes has made me more than a bit upset. How did many third world nations get into the predicaments that they now find themselves in? We, the first world nations, put them in those positions. We colonized the areas, we stripped them of their natural resources, and, within the past 50-75 years or so, we started letting them loose as they clamored for independence. In other words, they were crippled right out of the gate.

Just as many of these third world nations gained their independence, the Cold War started, which left the third world nations in a bit of a bind: should they side with the United States, which wasn’t overly keen on helping them develop? Or should they side with the Communists, who were willing to help them develop? Doing so, obviously, would put the third world nation on the United States list of “bad”nations.

Clearly, these are generalizations - the stories of third world nations are varied, just as the stories of first world nations are - but their stories are all rather similar. Usually, some first world nation (or a group of them) has played a large role in crippling a third world nation. And now that the third world nations have independence, what do many first world nations say? “Hey, what’s up with the third world nations? Why aren’t they developing?” Huh. I wonder.

I don’t know what the solutions are to all of the problems facing the third world are, but I do know this: if the first world nations don’t decide to truly help, to make ending poverty and disease throughout the third world a top priority, it won’t happen. While a few third world nations are crawling out of the pit we threw them in (South Korea, for example), most of the third world nations don’t have a chance in hell of improving without our help. While I certainly don’t know the solutions, I suppose the first step is for the first world nations to truly see and acknowledge the problems that the third world nations face, and accept that we have a huge role to play in fixing them.

Time to call on a cliché: we’re all in this together. I think it’s time we started acting as such.

Last quarter, in the American history course that I took, the class watched a documentary film from the 80s, called The Atomic Cafe (available on DVD from amazon). The film was made up entirely of videos produced during the post-WW2 era, many of them for propaganda use by the American government. No narration was given on top of the clips; the directors let the clips speak for themselves. If you’re interested in the Cold War and the bizarre mentality that the American government had about it, I highly recommend the film.

I want to touch on a specific scene from the film, which really struck me as odd. The scene in question is one showing President Truman, sitting at a desk, speaking to the American public. He says:

“Having found the atomic bomb, we have used it. It is an awful responsibility which has come to us. We thank God that it has come to us instead of to our enemies and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His way and for His purposes.“

(emphasis mine)

I don’t believe in the Christian God, but let’s say he exists, for the sake of argument. As I understand it, the Christian God loves everyone. All humans are his creation, and he cares about all of us equally, regardless of what we do. Certainly, there are rules that one should listen to, but if you break the rules, you can generally get him to forgive you (depending on what branch of Christianity you’re dealing with).

So, God loves everyone. And, being an omnipotent being, viewing everything all at once, he probably doesn’t think of his creation in terms of nationalities, countries, races. Everything on the planet is his creation. God doesn’t see the globe with national boundaries pencilled in.

And yet, in the above quote, we have an American President thanking God for, essentially, letting America “find the atomic bomb” first, and then going on to say that he hopes God will help them to use the weapon to do good.

This makes no sense to me. If God existed, and we were all his creations, and he loved all of us equally, I’m fairly confident that one thing he wouldn’t want us to do would be to “find” the most devastating weapon ever created, and then use it to blow up hundreds of thousands of people. That just doesn’t come across as very loving to me.

Perhaps it’s because we’re talking about America here, an admittedly special case - at least in the minds of many people. All Americans (and probably just about everyone else who’s hooked into the world via the internet or some other news outlet) have heard the phrase “God bless America.” Our Presidents, particularly the most recent one, have regularly claimed that God is on our side. It doesn’t seem to matter what the government is doing, or how morally wrong it is - because it’s America doing it, a lot of people think it’s fine, because they have this strange idea that God is on “our side.” I think it’s interesting to note that when other countries or groups do this - like when Islamist fundamentalists claim that God wanted them to blow something up - Americans generally scoff and say that the Islamist fundamentalists are just “evil” (whatever that means).

Claiming that God is on “our” side is nothing new; nations have done it for centuries. But America seems particularly bad about it. I’ve read many times online that a lot of Europeans look at our politics with some amusement, because of how often our politicians throw God into the mix. I’ve talked to some Europeans who find it downright peculiar. I do too, but I suppose that’s pretty clear from this entry.

So - I don’t believe in God, but if you do, and you’re someone who thinks that he’s on “our side”, perhaps you should reconsider. Maybe he isn’t on our side. Maybe God is getting fed up with America tossing his name around like a football. If I were in his position, I probably would be. Nukes for God… indeed. I’m sure right below that one, on God’s to-do list, he has “Insure America secures oil supply in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

I’ve tried to stay away from politics here, because I don’t think arguing about them really goes anywhere, but I couldn’t pass this one up. Yesterday, President Bush took part in a news conference at the White House. Apparently, he was asked to sum up his feelings about the Democratic wins in one.. facial expression. Here was his response:

[Source of image: CTV.ca]

Apparently, the Republicans are now fighting against Islamic fascism.

The irony is so great, I can hardly stand it…