53
Iran
ians were the righteous men who would scourge the continents in
the name of God.  The Americans, on the other hand, were the
contemptible  followers of the Great Satan.157
The Ayatollah had turned the pecking order upside down.  The
Americans, the children of the devil, were at the bottom.  And the
Iranians--the blessed of Allah-- were on the top.
What does this indicate about our foreign policy?  Poverty is a
relative term.  The poor are simply those on the lowest rungs of the
hierarchical ladder.  Move everyone up--including the poor--and the
impoverished will still be on the underside.  The poor in the Shah's
Teheran had things Iran's ancient emperors never dreamed of.  Cyrus
the Great might have offered half his kingdom for one slum-dwelling
Iranian's transistor radio or for the antibiotics given to a single
poverty-stricken child.  But what had made old Cyrus a god on earth?
Not his food, clothing and shelter.  His position on the top of the
pecking order.
The nations of the third world accept our handouts gladly.  They
even ask for more.  But they often hate us for our "generosity."  They
resent us as bitterly as the New Guinean big man humbled by a flood
of earthly goods or the Kwakiutl chief shamed by his rival's largesse.
Even if we eliminate starvation and disease, only one thing will
allow third world nations to overcome the emotional laceration of their
pecking order fate: an upward move.  But such is the nature of the
hierarchical ladder that whenever a creature moves up,  someone else
must be shoved down.  Many would like the one stomped toward the
bottom to be us.
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