In America today, we, the people, have entered a new era – and this one is deeply problematic.
Historically, the United States has generally switched from a globalist point of view (believing in worldwide involvement) to a nationalistic one (believing in a country sticking to itself) and then back again. This is pretty standard for Western countries,
with the United Kingdom and Australia also taking this position. But as of late, there are more and more people who just don’t care about either. This is an individualistic mindset where the world’s and the nation’s problems just don’t matter; the only thing that matters is the individual.
But I’m here to tell you to knock that off. No individualism, no nationalism. You should care about current global events and how much the US gets involved.
A lot of people shy away from paying attention to foreign affairs. “It won’t affect me,” they say. “It’s their problem, not mine. Why should I care?” But with two separate wars currently capturing the world’s attention, this argument begins to fall apart. No longer can we argue that Israel or Ukraine are none of our concern. With a violent “President” Vladimir Putin and a terrorist group in Palestine – and I’m not arguing against Palestinians or saying that Gaza is evil, that’s just where the Hamas group originates from – Americans really need to start caring.
We can’t ignore two full-out wars and just pretend that they don’t exist. It’s war! Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed across these two places. At that point, you can no longer argue that it’s just some minor fighting in Slavic Europe and the Middle East. As of Aug. 18, around 500,000 people in Ukraine have at minimum been injured, according to the New York Times. As of Nov. 15, more than 11,000 people have died in the Israel/Palestine region, most of whom are civilians and most of them are Palestinian. At this point, not caring is equivalent to saying, “Those lives didn’t matter anyway.”
But why are we Americans like this? This level of uncaring and personal importance is uniquely American. I think the reason is that the U.S. is isolated – not culturally or politically, but from conflict. There have been no wars on U.S. soil since Hawai’i in World War II, no terrorists killing thousands since 2001 and no power-hungry governments attempting to control our capital since Britain in the Revolutionary War. While this is objectively a good thing, it also isolates the American way of thinking to be very war centric. In most places, war is the last option, but America fights so many wars outside of the country that we’ve become desensitized to it. We don’t feel the dangers of the war we wage because we don’t fight wars on American soil. We need to acknowledge that this way of thinking is dangerous, and if we ever run into a land war in North America, in the Contiguous 48 and Alaska, we will regret our lack of empathy for people going through this.
Ironically, America as a government – which historically is terrible at appropriately caring about foreign affairs – seems to care the most about what is happening, especially in Israel and Palestine. This isn’t particularly surprising in this case, since they helped set up Israel as an independent nation, but, regardless of whether you support Israel or not, you have to acknowledge that we need to care about this. If the infamously uncaring U.S. government can care, you sure can as well. Pay attention! If you feel like I’m wrong, go out and prove it. Go show you care.
