Your Country Didn’t Change Overnight. You Just Weren’t Paying Attention

So shouted a woman in the United States in the last days of June 2018. She was voicing the sentiments of many while speaking to a reporter about how cruel it was to separate children from their immigrant parents as part of Donald Trump’s border policy. Thousands of people across several cities rejected being part of an America where immigrant toddlers were expected to appear in court alone. A five-year-old was crawling on the table in a courtroom, and a girl too young to know which country she was from was trying to draw it with crayons for her lawyer. Movie star Susan Sarandon was in police custody with another 500 people for occupying a state office in protest against the ridiculous cruelty, and Trump supporters were trashing her for being an “attention whore.” It was their country now.

What is a country? While searching for an answer to this question, I recalled the great Theo Angelopoulos movie. “What is tomorrow?” the film asked, and the answer was the title, Eternity and a Day. A country, I thought, is in fact a vast land and a table. It is a table surrounded by loved ones to whom you don’t have to explain your jokes, and the vast land that surrounds it, which is mostly your imagination.

Leave a Comment