Building an International Consciousness

Why Unity Among Global Citizens is More Important Than Ever (Vol. 4; Issue 33)

Critiquing Trump from various angles obviously preoccupies me, but the deafening air raid siren of his “America First” refrain is infuriating. The phrase, first coined by Woodrow Wilson in his 1916 campaign for president, refers to populist political theory emphasizing one’s own country. It encourages focusing solely on a country’s domestic policies, disregarding global affairs. It reeks of isolationism, nationalism, and protectionism.

Exactly 100 years after Wilson, Trump used the same slogan when first campaigning for president himself. True to form, he withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord, terminated the Iranian Nuclear Deal,* and threatened withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) while he was president. Trump’s plans for his next presidency—should the disaster occur—include implementing anti-immigrant policies (like massive deportations), bolstering US oil production (which ignores the reality of global warming), ending support for Ukraine, and otherwise continuing to isolate America from the rest of the world.

(More domestic than international, but Trump also hopes to repeal the Affordable Care Act—worsening our already embarrassing status as the only industrialized nation without universal access to health care).

Despite Trump’s nationalist proclivities, the world has become an extremely connected place. You need know nothing about geopolitics to understand that you can instantaneously text, email, DM, or otherwise contact anyone anywhere in the world. You can fly from one side of the globe to the other in 24 hours or less. And, why wait for newspaper deliveries when you can get minute-by-minute updates from major media outlets through news alerts? According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), some 8.5 billion people worldwide had mobile phone subscriptions in 2022—a number then exceeding the world’s population.