On hating other nations

Politicans talk of  'people' and 'nations' often. They do this to achieve an effect. They are talking rubbish. No nation is unified in the sense in which they say it is. No country, not even a village!, has only people who think in the same way, who live in the same way. No country or nation is 'good' or 'bad'. Governments, leaders, individuals, organizations are eveil, bad, heroic, good, decent, average. But countries?

Talk of nations usually engeders an artifical 'them and us' way of thinking. The army and politicians use it to awaken hate and alienation in people towards others living in different countries. They use this hatred when they are justifying wars and other horrors they inflict on others in the name of their countries.

The truth is that people are the same everywhere. Sure, cultures, habits, efficiency, cleanliness, clothes, etc. differ. What does not differ is that there are good and bad and average people everywhere. That the average Jane, or Cuicui, or Sakura, or Johanna does not want war and does not care about other countries. The average John, or Jose, or Maua, or Xun wants to get on with his job, be safe, and have a healthy family. This is what is universal and what would serve as a perfect platform for peaceful global growth. All war and conflict is about the power-games of leaderships who have interests in gaining more money and power. Be that Russia, China, the US, or the European countries, Japan or African or South-American countries, it is always about the might of the elites. Wars are not for and in the interest of the people.

The section quoted below illustrates eminently well how people find out that other countries have normal folks living in them too.

"Yes, I remember that being at war with the Italians was taken as a licence for Americans to defecate all over them. Even though most of us in the base section at Naples had never closed with an Italian in combat. Our argument was that we should treat the Neapolitans as the Neapolitans would have treated our cities presumably if they'd won the war. I watched old ladies of Naples pushed off the sidewalks by drunken GIs and officers. Every Italian girl was fair pray to propositions we wouldn't have made to a streetwalker back home. Those who spoke Italian used the tu on everyone they met. And I remember seeing American MPs beating the driver of a horse and wagon because they were obstructing traffic on Via Roma. I don't think the Germans could have done any better in their concentration camps. I thought that all humanity had gone from the world, and that this war had smothered decency forever.

- These Eyeties, the mess sergeant said, ain't human beins. They're just Gooks, that's all.
- All I know, the corporal said doggedly and worriedly, is that they ain't Americans...They don't see things the way we do.
- They'd steal anything, the mess sergeant said, stuffing a turkey, his mouth crammed with giblet leavings.

I remember that other arguments against the Neapolitans, besides the cardinal one, that they'd declared war on us, were that they stole and were filthy-dirty. I only know that no Neapolitan ever stole anything from me, for I took pains to see that no temptation was put in their way. Though once my wallet was lifted in a New York subway. And for those Neapolitans to whom I sometimes gave an extra bar of soap, I noticed that they used this soap joyfully on themselves, their children, their clothes. I've buried my face in the hair of Neapolitan girls. It was just as sweet as an American girl's if the Napoletana had the wherewithal to wash it.

I remember that in Naples after my heart broke I decided that a stricly American point of view in itself offered no peace or solution for the world. So I began to make friends with the Neapolitans. And it didn't surprise me to find that, like everyone else in the world, they had their good and their bad and their admixtures of both. To know them, I'd been working on my Italian. That lovely supple language was kind to my tongue. The Neapolitans were gracious in helping me with it.
(...)
This forced me to the not original conclusion that the Neapolitans were like everybody else in the world, and in an infinite variety. Because I was an americano the Neapolitans treated me with a strange pudding of respect, dismay, and bewilderment. A few loathed me. But from most Italians I got a decency and kindness that they'd  have showered on any other American in Naples who'd made up his mind to treat them like human beings. I'm not bragging. I'm not unique."

From John Horn Burns's The Gallery, in the section appearing as 'My Heart Finally Broke in Naples' in War Stories (eds. Sebastian Faulks and Jörg Hensgen), 2014, London: Vintage, pp. 274-5.