World Dominoes Falling

Do you remember, as a child, taking a set of dominoes and standing them up end on end next to each other, and then tipping the first over and watching with unrestrained glee as they all come tumbling down? No? That may only be me, but I’m sure you get the concept. It’s all cause and effect: the first domino knocks over the second, and the second the third, and so on.

What does this have to do with politics?

Especially in America, we like to believe we are that shining city on the hill, impervious to anything else that happens in the world. We want to be independent, above all else, and sometimes this desire is so strong and so pervasive that it deludes us into believing that we actually can be. But, no matter what we might want to believe, the truth is that there is no such thing as an independent nation in the modern world. The truth is that if a war breaks out in, say, Ukraine, then the oil prices rise in the United States. Now that we’ve got gas prices under control, it’s tempting to push the narrative that our concerns in Ukraine have somehow diminished, but that would be farther from the truth. In Africa, right now, there’s a hunger crisis that’s linked to the Ukraine war.

This is the truth: we are all interconnected. There are no islands, and there is no way to disentangle if we wish to maintain our envied lifestyles here in the states. And if we’re not feeling the war in Ukraine yet in any real way here in the states, don’t worry…it’s coming. And that famine? 1.3 million people are fleeing their homes because of it, and they all have to go somewhere.