We Have This in Common With Our Afghan Allies

They are not the highest priority

We prefer us to them, even if we are supposed to be we.

We prefer e Pluribus Unum to anything from outside of the US most of the time. But we have certain connections that are bigger than the one that results from many.

Japan’s defeat of Russia revealed such a bond — a joke that did not see the punchline told until the League of Nations in San Francisco.

Those preferences explain, more than greed or other tropes — how certain cultures make important decisions.

Tribe Comes First

Even though Japan helped us win World War 1, the West refused to say they were human beings when asked by the Japanese to do so in the charter to the League of Nations.

The New World has this origin story. A boat leaves Europe, lands elsewhere, and somehow lots of people in the new place leave that place.

The newcomers claim the new place, build a church, teach the survivors how to get to heaven. Those who are still in the new place are usually invited to help with the work at that point. So to speak.

After that comes a kind of amnesia as the current time approaches. This is combined with a redemption arc in which they see…