We are all enemies now

 (In which the Blob issues its standard disclaimer about wandering off the Sportsball reservation in search of an open space to shake its fist in a non-compartmented manner. You know the drill.)

A bright chilly Tuesday here in the United States of Suspicion, and I'm thinking about the Brits again.

There were three of them, a father and his almost-adult children, one a university student and the other a high school kid, or whatever they call high school in Great Britain. The young man was a huge NBA fan, and when he found out I was a retired sportswriter he grilled me about Steph and LeBron and all his other faves. The young woman, her father said with ill-disguised pride, was a talented artist.

One warm summer afternoon a couple of years back, we sat chatting in the observation car of the California Zephyr, the stunning canvas of America sliding past as we rode the rails west through Utah and Nevada and on toward San Francisco.

"What brings you to the States?" I asked, at one point.

The father replied that he wanted to show his children America, and he decided taking the train across the country was how to do that. It unfolded more slowly that way, like a topo  map unfolding in real time to reveal worn foothills and mountains and farmland and endless prairie and the stark, jagged beauty of the American west.

The country in all its grandeur and squalor and infinite ordinariness, in other words. That's what Dad was after when they all boarded the train in New York City and set off for the Pacific.

I didn't ask how long they planned to be in the country. It didn't seem to matter at the time.

Now it might.

Now, see, it is no longer that time but this time, the time of the Regime, when America has grown grim and insensate, not to mention deeply paranoid about anyone who is not, you know, American. If you speak no English, or you speak it with a funny accent, or you look, (wink-wink) different, you are not to be trusted, in this America. 

You're a foreigner, dammit. And foreigners are up to no good more times than you think.

Which is why, at the end of last week, the Regime rolled out its latest edict regarding foreign nationals: If you are one of them, and you're 14 or older, you have 30 days to register with the government. If you've been here longer than that, or plan to be, and haven't registered, it's a misdemeanor. Depending on the circumstances, you could even be deported.

Also, once you've registered, you must carry proof on your person at all times.

Me, I wonder if that would have applied to the British father and his two kids.

They were simply delightful people, the three of them, and so, as obvious tourists, perhaps they wouldn't have had to carry the proper papers (German accent implied, naturally). And perhaps, on Day 31, some jackbooted Regime official would not have asked to see them. 

 Honestly, I don't really know. Neither the Dog Killer (i.e. Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem) nor Regime mouthpiece Spinderella Barbie (i.e., press secretary Karoline Leavitt) made it clear how America would treat foreign nationals who were just here on an extended holiday. 

You'd hope my British friends would have been treated like guests and not potential terrorists. You'd hope they would have been treated the way America used to treat overseas visitors back when America was still America, and not this dark, angry place it's become.

You treated people from elsewhere with common decency, in that other America. You assumed the best about them and not the worst. You granted them the benefit of the doubt as a simple courtesy.

But that was then. And this is now.

When we are all enemies, it seems, until proven otherwise.