The absurdity of borders

Something I thought of during my COVID induced break

When I was a child we were driving across the country from Texas to visit my aunt and uncle in Minnesota. This was our first road trip in the United States and we celebrated by making my parents stop at every single McDonald’s we saw. I also remember being very excited to drive across state borders because I was imagining that something magical would happen once you crossed a border. I don’t remember exactly what I expected, maybe the air would smell different or the line that I saw on the maps would be demarcated by some natural phenomena on the ground. I was deeply disappointed when we hit the first border and all there was to mark the beginning of another state was a sign that said welcome to blah blah blah. I don’t remember the state we crossed first, so I’m assuming it was Oklahoma. Nothing amazing happened when we crossed the border, which means that line on that map literally meant nothing. 

Now as an adult, every day I wake up, I’m so shocked that people wake up every morning and accept that these things called countries are real. No, this is not after I’ve smoked marijuana. You might think it’s weird that I think about this every day but don’t you think it’s more weird that we’ve all been convinced that lines on a piece of paper are real? Like we believe these things called countries are real to the point that we feel people who are born within the same lines as we are are more important than people who are born outside those lines. I mean I don’t blame us. There is a whole lot of propaganda out there to get us to become these nationalists. It all starts with rooting for your middle school basketball team, and ends with you waving a flag made by some random white person. 

What’s especially absurd to me is that white people drew these lines and the rest of the world accepts a fate determined by people who created these countries to oppress them. Like they literally divided our home into little chunks of exploitation, like they were kids splitting candy. Borders are meant to exploit. They are meant to demarcate regions that are exploited by a certain group of people. When you are loyal to your country, you are being loyal to the people who exploit you. It’s not your country, it's their country. They make all the decisions, they make laws, and sometimes they trick you into thinking that you have a choice in the matter by having elections.

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