Our Borgare’s Love for NATO

The reader may remember that recently the UN Assembly voted with a clear majority to make the possession and/or use of nuclear weapons illegal. In order to become binding, this vote has now to be ratified by the national parliaments of the UN members.

About the chances of ratification by the Swedish parliament, Hbl of 5.09. was quoting from the Swedish Aftonbladet the following passage: ”I Sverige gör borgerliga politiker och opinionsbildare nu stor sak av sitt motstånd att Sverige ska underteckna FN-konventionen om förbud mot kärnvapen. Det skulle, säger man, inte stoppa Kim Jong-Un. Dessutom anses en svensk underskrift kunna reta upp USA, alltså Trump och hans gäng.”

If anybody should still remember what I was some time ago writing in this blog under the headline ”Nuclear Weapons – how to get rid of them”, s/he will not be surprised that I am myself not any eager supporter of that UN resolution. In fact I consider it rather a hindrance than a help in the job of reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world. But I do certainly NOT think so for the same reasons as those ”borgerliga politiker”. Rather, I think their behaviour very interesting PSYCHOLOGICALLY: the big danger they seem to see just in Kim Jong-Un (as if we had not been living since decades with 8 nuclear powers, to which Kim Jong-Un has now added a 9th – but I think him still intelligent enough to know what will happen to his country, and himself, if he should provoke another nuclear power into retaliation), and their eager consideration of Trump’s and his gang’s possible reactions would at other times have been considered a reproachable case of ”Finlandisering”.

In their concentration on just Kim Jong-Un as a ”dangerous enemy” they are of course following the lead of the US government, and their consideration of just the USA’s possible reaction to a possible ratification of the UN convention by Sweden can be interpreted as either fear or eagerness to please. As to fear, it might not yet be probable that the USA will start a war against Sweden (although they might not let Sweden into NATO, or similar), and as to eagerness to please, it seems to the observer a rather misplaced behaviour considering that at least the Republican party of the USA has now produced criminal presidents twice in a row (and that Obama got the Nobel Peace Price in the BEGINNING of his presidency one can perhaps ascribe to the world’s huge relief that G. W. Bush was finally out of office, but not so much to any special achievement from the side of Obama); and every four years there is of course also in the future the danger that there will be a criminal US president. Thus, from where this borgerliga eagerness to please the USA?

Thinking of my own memories from my upbringing in a Christian-conservative family plus my observations of conservative doings during my lifetime, I think that this love of the USA is partly due to unthinking continuation of assumptions which were more adequate right after 1945 (when the USA had indeed invested quite an effort and quite some sacrifices to rid the world of truly unpleasant powers), but which , considering the development the USA have undergone SINCE, are meanwhile out of place. But in a borgare’s mind there seems even now to be an ACUTE appreciation of the USA as a PROTECTOR, not only against groups of the population which might intend to rob ”honest people” of their ”well-earned” comforts, or even to harm them physically (as to be expected from TERRORISTS), but also against qualms of conscience: the neoliberal ideology, which we ”owe” to the Chicago School of Economy and the conservative Anglo-Saxon governments of Reagan and Thatcher (plus our mainstream media, who were spreading these ideas as if they were the plain truth – well, they were incidentally owned by people who were profiting from these ideas …), is after all very clear about its claims that it is GOOD FOR EVERYBODY if property is concentrated in the hands of rather few rich ones (this is known as the trickle-down theory – meanwhile disproven by, among others, Ha-Joon Chang in ”Thing 13” of his ”23 Things …”). Thus, to be allied with the USA gives to a borgare the soothing feeling of being protected against revolutionaries and terrorists, and also of being the rightful occupant of the moral high ground (making money is after all, see above, good for everybody, to which comes still the old traditon of considering any criticism of this situation as an expression of – morally objectionable – envy). More shortly, the feelings of a borgare towards the USA are partly traditional gratitude (towards the American LIBERATOR), partly fear (of those dangerous/greedy/envious members of the lower classes), and partly the result of simple flattery. Unluckily the producers of the mainstream media are aware that it sells well to cultivate these feelings (and, logically, the allegiance to the USA), so that it will be OUR job to spread some insights into the psychological background of the love of the USA and the NATO.