The Politics of the Foreigner

Last updated on: June 30, 2016 at 10:36 am by Eric Smith

The Politics of the Foreigner 2016-06-28T10:41:03-06:00 Eric Smith

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Rembrandt, Moses and the Ten Commandments. Image in the public domain, taken from Wikipedia at By Rembrandt – The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=157868

By: Berry Wilson

As I reflected on this week’s readings on Exodus and other law codes in the Hebrew Bible, I could not help but think of election-related issues surrounding national pride, immigration and foreign policy. With respect to national pride (nationalism?) and immigration, the views of the leading presidential candidates remind of the encounters between the Abraham and the Hebrew people and their enemies regarding tensions between historical concepts and beliefs regarding ethnic and cultural purity, on the one hand, and embracing of diversity, on the other hand. I can well imagine that the Old Testament concept of “strangers in a foreign land” is alive and well in the minds of certain ethnic groups as the leading candidates continue to have debates and disagreements about whether the groups and individuals within the groups are truly “American” and entitled to the benefits afforded by American citizenship. Based on this week’s readings, “foreign policy” in the Old Testament seemed to be, for the most part, clearer and formalized in treaties and covenants, whereas foreign policy views and discussions by leading candidates can, in my opinion, be characterized as “fluid and empty sound bites”. I am reminded of George Orwell’s “1984” in the sense that there seems to be a lot of revisionist history being disseminated by the leading candidates as they strive to re-write and/or re-position certain events of the past and their roles in these events.

It is interesting how, in the election, references to the Divine are hardly mentioned except in the case of political expediency. In addition, the fact that the candidates’ selection of issues (and the related “spin” on the issues) changes depending on the target audiences and cultures (in the same way various sources of the Hebrew Bible saw events differently) and the “hot topics” of the moment reinforces the need to look beyond what they are saying and trying to dig deeper into why they are saying it, to whom they are saying it, and the results that they hope will result from their espoused views. In this election (as well as previous elections), the Hebrew Bible concept of loyalty to bloodline is replaced by shifting loyalties and ever-changing alliances (case in point: the manner in which the candidates’ views regarding Brexit do not always line up with their previous views regarding the EU and whether it is a viable union, a good thing and sustainable), making it very difficult to determine who the candidates really are and their true stand on the major issues confronting our country and the rest of the world. Perhaps I come across as being a cynic, but I believe that cynicism can often be a good starting point in the search for truth.

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