NB: I do not believe that anyone should ever vote for anyone who is engaged in waging or arming wars or promising to do the same. The world is in climate collapse and on the edge of nuclear apocalypse; it’s too late for which genocidaire is more enlightened than another. So, feel free to scrutinize the following for who I’m supposedly trying to get you to vote for, but for godsake don’t actually vote for any of them.
I want to suggest an alternative worldview to that promoted by J.D. Vance and company. Like the Olympics announcers passionately demanding patriotism moments before swooning over John Lennon’s Imagine, much of our discourse misses the central role of nationalism because it is so thoughtlessly assumed.
The problem is not just that Vance promotes ideas like increasing birth rates cruelly and should do so in a kind and considerate way. The problem is not just that Vance really wants white people in the United States increasing their birth rates and should want the same for everyone holding a valid U.S. passport. The problem is not just that Vance wants women burdened and endangered in ways men are not subjected to. The problem is not just that Vance cannot imagine caring about anyone other than one’s own children and yet wants to hold a key position in determining the life outlooks for everyone’s children. These are all major god damned problems. They won’t all vanish the instant a different problem is addressed, much less when it is recognized. But they are united by an overarching problem the recognition of which points to an alternative that is inspiring and liberating, whereas the only alternative offered by the corporate media or the Democratic Party is mealy-mouthed mush.
Here’s the problem: neither Vance nor CNN nor Kamala Harris imagines all the people sharing all the world. They never think as global citizens. Once you think as a global citizen, you not only become a fan of every Olympic athlete, a brother or sister of every courageous activist, a proud confederate of every great author and artist on Earth ever, and an opponent of everybody’s wars, but you also gain the ability or permission to notice and say “The birth rate is not decreasing, it’s increasing (you idiot)!” It’s increasing globally, and pretenses of impenetrable borders and of humanitarian wars and of the fictional nature of climate collapse won’t keep the population of human beings within the borders of the United States from increasing. So, by all means, Vance should be nicer to both ladies and cats, but fundamentally he should shut up until he gets his facts straight.
Vancianism glorifies and mythologizes the personal, the local, the tribal, the provincial. That is an option, but it’s an option that cannot be addressed without recognizing it and proposing a better way. The stupidity of caring only about one’s own family — or even just part of one’s own family — or only people who look like you or only people who talk like you or only people who do the same ancient superstition rituals as you or only people born in the same corner of the globe as you . . . these are all stupidities that sit at odds with global citizenship. Needless to say — one would hope, but never knows — caring about people beyond a certain group does not mean reducing one’s caring for people within a certain group. This obvious fact is basic liberal politics requiring no unusual willingness to treat nonmathematical things as if they aren’t mathematics. Opposing racism is not usually greeted with concern that one will have to cease caring about people of one’s own “race.” Neither should caring about the 96 percent of humanity not in the United States be treated as a demand to hate your friends and loved ones for living near you.
What changes if you become a global citizen? Nothing formal. Nothing legal. And you gain no admission to any grand smoke-filled room where people hatch secret plans to give you free education or healthcare. But you stop tolerating your government behaving as the top violator of and abstainer from basic human rights and disarmament treaties, the sole holdout on the convention on the rights of the child, the major weapons distributor to the globe, the leading saboteur of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, the primary vetoer of the world majority at the United Nations Security Council, the sine qua non of the slaughters in Gaza and Ukraine, the instigator of more wars than any other entity, the top opponent of protection of the Earth’s environment, the top violator of the rights of other nations through actions ranging from sanctions to coups. If you want to shout “End the wars and spend the money on me!” I won’t object. But you’ll be more effective shouting “End the wars and spend the money on me and the rest of humanity!” not only because you’ll stop sounding selfish but also because you’ll start sounding as if you have some idea how much the wars cost.