Saturday, September 26, 2020

Causes of Cognitive Dissonance and National Narcissistic Rage

Here's another "quickie" post.  And it has to do with White American foreign policy under Donald Trump and the perceptions of other nations which have been created for American consumption by its most powerful media outlets.  I want to make one suggestion and one observation.  The suggestion: the foreign policy of the United States against China is actually an expression of White supremacist narcissistic rage against China on account of the fact that a nation of over one billion non-White people has made itself an independent success.  That was not supposed to happen.  Rather, China was supposed to live forever in the thrall of the United States, because China was supposed to be forever dependent on the United States.  The United States was supposed to be forever the dominant player, dictating to everyone else on earth what they can and cannot do.  China is neatly contradicting that expectation.  You may not know this, but China has successfully orbited two space stations and sent a robot probe to the moon, and has launched a robot mission to Mars

And China is not the only nonwhite, non-European nation to have begun its own exploration of outer space.  The United Arab Emirates has also launched a robot probe to Mars.  China and the UAE join India in the successful development of demanding technologies for space travel.  

But the most pleasantly surprising news is much closer to home.  When COVID-19 first broke upon the world scene, many commentators in the Global North expected that the pandemic would decimate the nations of Black Africa, who were seen as perennial "savages" perennially in need of rescue by White "saviors."  However, it now appears that the nations of the African continent have done very, very well in containing the pandemic and limiting both infections and deaths.  Living on the African continent is becoming safer than living in the United States.  This is due to the commonsense approaches of various African governments to the challenge of providing health care for the common good.  (For what it's worth, I should also note that according to one source, the nations of Africa have a better airline safety record than Russia.)

In short, the rest of the world seems to have learned in large measure how to live (and to live well!) without the United States.  This will undoubtedly deprive Trump of the narcissistic supply he had hoped to enjoy by withholding access to America and its resources from people whom he deemed to be much more needy than America.  Instead of that enjoyment, Trump now finds himself in the position of the evil mother in the Grimm fairy tale Snow White.

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