The world builds a wall to keep America out

You might call it poetic, if it weren’t so painful. Donald Trump won the White House largely on a campaign of shutting America’s borders to pretty much everyone other than people of European descent. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” he once asked, about Haitians, Salvadorans and Africans. “We should have more people from places like Norway.”

So what should one conclude about America’s own proximity to Trump’s global latrine now that “places like Norway” have decided to keep their borders indefinitely closed to us?

Among the list of nations to which Norway and the rest of Europe will soon reopen for travel are three from the continent that Trump flushed down the toilet: Algeria, Morocco and Rwanda. Canada is also on the list. So is China, assuming it reciprocates.

But Trump’s America is not, because we are nowhere close to meeting Europe’s criteria for reducing the spread of the coronavirus. How successfully a society can fight a pandemic is as objective a measure of national capacity, not to mention “greatness,” as one is likely to find — and on this, like so much else these days, America ranks near the bottom.

I have lived in the United States for more than 30 years, and I can’t think of any national failure as naked and complete as this one. When I look at the graphs showing American infections soaring while the virus abates in nearly every other affluent country, I feel the sting of defeat, misery and embarrassment.

As an immigrant from South Africa, I find it hard to resist seeing Europe’s travel dis as the ultimate comeuppance of Trump’s xenophobia. Like a lot of Americans, I sometimes find myself assuming American exceptionalism — the idea that America’s founding ideals make us morally superior to “ordinary” nations and confer on us special credibility and insight when dealing with global crises.

But America’s pandemic failure demolishes the notion that our country is better off without people and ideas from beyond our borders. The last few months should stick a fork in the absurd proposition that the United States enjoys some kind of monopoly on brilliance. Clearly, we do not. Rather than close ourselves off from the planet, we should be inviting others to join the urgent project of rebuilding America.

I bang this drum often. As I’ve argued before, I am in favor of throwing America’s borders wide open to much of the world. My primary reasons are moral — I don’t think a country founded on the idea that everyone is equal should seal itself off to the ambitious billions who live beyond our shores. (To be continued)