As an individual, you can actually do quite a lot. While not every country important in this discussion is a democracy, you can still form relationships with individuals such as yourselves who can have influence in their own countries. You can befriend people from Pakistan simply by talking to them online, or you can join a volunteer program or religious mission to many citizens in Pakistan. In doing so, you start building relationships with people who will eventually have influence in small ways but when each person makes a small decisions, that can start a big wave of change that could start with their small businesses and might eventually change the way their government thinks. You can do this in many countries. I’ve formed ties with many people in China while I lived there and still communicate with people through the social media sites that aren’t blocked there.
If you’re going to start a business or already run a business, please source your products from democracies. I don’t know why we initiated a major globalization project throughout the world and decided to give all our jobs to China. I’m in favor of international trade, but they’ve used it as a weapon. Work with India. They’re a democracy, and they are right next to China. They have ties with the United States, and most of them even speak English, if that would’ve been a sticking point for you.
Finally, we need to elect people who want greater ties with the international community. Nationalism will give us exactly that…a nation. It won’t give us any acceptance by the international community. Therefore, we need to elect people in 2018 and 2020 that understand that. We need to elect people who are in favor of international trade and who know how to use it in a way that benefits both the United States and the world. We need to elect people who will reach out to our allies and countries who are wondering whether to move East or West and show them that we care and show them that we understand their culture and want to work with them and let them be who they are without conforming to someone to American ultra-nationalist identity that only benefits us.
The most importantly you can do is show the world that you’re not Trump. When I lived abroad because the loved Obama. I was surrounded by people in 2012 on election night when Obama won, and I can’t tell you how I was that those people weren’t upset about the results. Now that Trump has won, my recent trip to China included people probing whether I agreed with Trump or not. While things don’t get out of hand, it’s clear that there’s an association between a country’s leaders and how other countries view its citizens. Anything you can do to reach out to even one citizen of another nation to tell them what you stand for will help.
You’ve reached the end of Series 27: Falling Behind On The World Stage
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