Canada/United States - The National Self Exploits the Other's Border Brutality, Offloading Its Conscience onto ICE

Event Baseline: As Canada tightens its asylum rules, refugees attempting to reunite with family in Montreal are being turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the border, where they face months of detention in often harsh conditions.

The national self builds a wall of laws and then hides behind it. Canada, proud of its tolerant image, hands the rejected other to a system known for its cruelty. This is a perfect demonstration of moral fragmentation. The Canadian self says, 'We are not cruel; we are simply following rules.' But the action is cruelty. The illusion of a separate national identity allows the mind to disown responsibility. It projects the act of detention onto the U.S., pretending its hands are clean. This is a fatal software error. The self is conditioned by the idea of borders, which are lines on a map drawn by thought. These lines become more real than the flesh of the suffering refugee. Until the nation-state hallucination is dissolved, the body of the other will be crushed in the gears of this inhuman machine.