Blaming Foreigners for American Failings Won't Fix Them

"If there's one belief that unites Americans across the political spectrum, it's that other countries are the reason we can't have nice things. "We sent $250 billion to Ukraine," the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk wrote on X in January. "And yet we can't get water to fight fires in California." In 2023, Assemblyman (and now New York City Mayor-Elect) Zohran Mamdani told an audience at a Democratic Socialists of America conference that"

"certainly leaves much to critique. But when lashing out becomes a substitute for looking inward, such criticism devolves into conspiracism: a way to pin domestic problems on outsiders so as to avoid reckoning with their real causes at home. This rhetorical move may generate applause from partisans, but it's self-defeating, because societies that externalize their internal issues will fail to fix them."

Many Americans across the political spectrum attribute domestic hardships to foreign actors, citing examples such as aid to Ukraine, alleged Israeli influence on policing, and federal spending choices blamed for local budget cuts. Political figures and activists on left and right use external scapegoats to explain high housing costs, insurance prices, and service shortfalls. Rhetorical moves that pin internal problems on outsiders often become conspiracism that substitutes for internal accountability. Such externalization can produce partisan applause but undermines effective problem-solving. Societies that project responsibility outward risk failing to identify and correct the domestic policies, institutions, and choices that generate those problems.

Read at The Atlantic