The United Nations, Perspective, and Lion
NOTE: I have decided to shake things up a bit here at The Sensitive Armadillo. I have felt that by constricting myself to a weekly theme (that I decide a week in advance), I am doing a poor job of entering into the topic of the moment. Therefore, I am doing away with the weekly structure of the posts on this website and I will start doing them when the moment is right. Knowing this administration, this will probably be even more frequent than just weekly. I hope that, by doing this, the website can become more reactionary and more akin to the zeitgeist. Thank you and I hope that, whoever is still reading this, you stick around. On with this week’s piece!
I had an entire outline for this week’s article written when my uncle told me something that made me reconsider my course of action for the essay. Steadily, Vladimir Putin has been moving in on various sorts of western democracies with his eye on dismantling them for the benefit of his regime, quest for power, and sole political motivations. I asked my uncle if he thought it would be better to stop Trump or to stop Putin first and he responded, “Trump first.” I was expecting the opposite response because I thought a foreign enemy was more dangerous than a domestic enemy, but then I realized I was neglecting something.
When you’re on an airplane and the flight attendants deliver their safety spiel, you are told to put your own oxygen mask on before beginning to assist others. The same logic applies here. Before America can help the rest of the world, we have to help ourselves first. We have to put on our oxygen mask before embarking to the lands of communism where I am sure the air is very thick.
This changes my perspective on the role of the United Nations and on the movie, Lion, but in very different capacities.
Notably, Donald Trump gave German Chancellor Angela Merkel an invoice for her to pay money to the United States because he is an elderly man who watches too much Fox News and has no idea how international diplomacy works. But that’s beside the point. From Trump’s perspective, Merkel was trying to con him. And being a “dealmaker” (this is still up for debate), he decided to try to work his magic and it, of course, failed miserably.
And now preliminary reports provide the notion that Trump is threatening the United States’ involvement (or, at least, their level of involvement) in the United Nations. This is absurdly troubling to me because I’m of the mind (I’m sure many people are) that the U.S. is hugely important for the benefit of other countries (if not, all countries. For now, let’s say that it’s at least the countries dominated by people who look like “us”). But now, with the United States in a tailspin, I feel that maybe it’d be best if we were less involved in the United Nations until we get ourselves straightened out. Why would I ever want Trump more involved with the rest of the world? So far, he’s proven to only be capable of inflicting damage. We’ve got to figure out this damn oxygen mask first. It’s tangled and bouncing all around!
I was ready to barge into this essay and start throwing out different elements of Lion (the Oscar nominated true story of Saroo Brierley who was separated from his family as a child in India, adopted by Australian parents, and later used Google Maps to find his mother again) like how he was nearly kidnapped by a child sex trafficking organization (twice) and how his brother was struck and killed by a train. I was ready to start talking about these things through the lens of perspective and maybe try to show that while Trump is terrible, things could be worse. But now, I realize that’s the wrong thing to do. One, first-world problems (not the Ryan Seacrest type of problems, the impending rise of fascism type) are still problems and Trump is a threat to so many American lives. Two, it would be a mistake to try to help people like Saroo who come from poverty and are put up for adoption without parental consent when we’re not at full strength. We might only make things worse.
When Saroo’s adopted mother explains that she did have the ability to have kids of her own, she says, “The world has enough people in it. Have a child, couldn’t guarantee it will make anything better. But to take a child that’s suffering like you boys were. Give you a chance in the world. That’s something.” From her perspective, she wanted to make a difference in the world. From the perspective of many, they want to make a difference, too. It might be hard to realize, but you can’t make a difference if you don’t ensure that you’re at your own full strength. You have to put your oxygen mask on and you have to impeach Donald Trump (if the link to Russia confirms what it seems to be indicating). You have to help yourself.
