The Muslim Ban is as American as Apple Pie
Trump’s ban — and the wall — are heartbreaking and terrifying. But let’s not pretend they’re surprising.
I have a question I want to ask. It does, however, require a rather lengthy set-up, so please bear with me.
Imagine that I am telling you the history of a country. The history starts not too long ago when, after some fits and starts, a group of European refugees comes ashore a new land. After gleaning information from preexisting residents on matters of crop growing and winter-surviving, the settlers decide the most expedient option moving forward would be to simply exterminate the indigenous people. This cycle repeats in various locations across the new land until there are so many European refugees that they decide they would like to self-govern and become their own country. The form a loose coalition and stage a violent uprising against their home nation, ultimately succeeding in large part by adopting the strategies of the pesky indigenous peoples that they had nearly eradicated. A group comprising polymaths and slaveholders gets together to draft documents to govern the new nation, throwing in a few words about freedom for all people as a lark.
Like a wobbly newborn fawn, the new country initially struggles to find its footing. But always on the lookout for a good land deal, the country purchases a hefty portion of the remaining continent, disregarding any of the existing residents who may have been located in the area wondering what the fuck was going on. Throw in a quick sequel war with their former home country that resulted in a sweet propaganda song, and the country is feeling good.
In the southern section of this nation, business begins to boom. A revolutionary invention amplifies demand for the region’s signature cash crop, and landowners double-down on an extremely cost-effective and profitable business model — travelling to the African continent, abducting its indigenous people, chaining them, shipping them across the ocean, selling them on the open market and forcing them pick seeds out of cotton balls. Unfortunately, the line in the founding documents about “freedom for all” — which to this point in the country’s history has clearly been meant as a joke — was taken a little too seriously by a few people in the northern parts of the nation with nothing to lose monetarily, and they insisted their southern neighbors cut it out. The southerners then decided that they would like to self-govern and become their own country, so they formed a loose coalition and went to war with their home country. They lost the war and rejoined the nation, but still found time to execute the leader of the reformed country while he was trying to take a load off and watch a show.
It was a rough time for the new country, and unable to cope, it started to speak with God. He, for some reason, directed the now teenage nation to immediately resume executing indigenous people while it marched across the continent to the nearest ocean. God, at some point, also demanded the country shoot all the buffalo while they were at it
The nation spent the next few decades killing more of its leaders and trying to figure out what to do what all those African people they shackled and brought to the country. After a brief period in which they tested out treating them as human beings, the country decided they didn’t like that plan all that much and instituted a series of laws, taxes and literary tests that that effectively made the “didn’t even want to be here in the first place” indigenous African people second-class citizens. This program lasts for more or less 75 years.
It should be noted that the country has, to this point, given no thought whatsoever to the role women will play in its history.
By now, the country decides it is old enough to conquer some foreign nations just like its parents did, taking Guam, the Philippians and Puerto Rico. Around this time, the country decides to let women partake in its democracy, but only after more pressing matters such as how many games will the World Series last are sorted out. Buoyed by a burgeoning sense of national pride, the country decides that it cannot stand for other countries doing what it had just recently decided to stop doing itself and rescues the world from tyranny. The country is now the most powerful nation on earth.
The country responds to this reality by spending the latter half of the 20th century killing some more of its leaders, being forced kicking and screaming to finally live up to its ideal of freedom for all, then killing the leader who made them live up to it. After suffering a horrible attack at the dawn of the new century, the country responds by invading a not-responsible country while making up a reason to do so. The country goes through another rough stretch, bankrupts the world economy, and decides for even briefer period that it wants to give the old “treat anyone who is not a white man like an actual human being” thing a go one more time. The country, however, decides it really doesn’t like it this time, and the country responds by making a person who promises to revert it to the polices of a century ago its new leader. The country is now at the present day.
Now, finally, here is my question. If I told you that this same country has decided to build a large, pointless wall along its southern border to serve as a symbol of hate and isolation to the world, or that the country has decided to ban over 100 million human beings people based on broad fears of their religion and race… would you be at all surprised?
