Clash of cultures fuels fear

This last weekend - the early-autumn days spanning from Sept. 16 to 19 - marks in almost perfect miniature the potential horrors of cultural hatred let loose across the American land.

The events of these dark days clarified not only several of the possible "terrorist" tragedies of the type Americans have so feared in recent years, but also the foreign countries involved.

For now, think not only of the patterns revealed over the weekend, but of the descriptions first given of the malefactors and of the countries and movements that lurk like dark clouds in the background of their - and our - minds:

- On Saturday morning, a pipe bomb exploded in Seaside Park, New Jersey, near the starting area of a charity race. A suspect was not arrested until Monday after a shootout with police, when (of all things) he was found asleep in the doorway of a bar. Enter Ahmad Khan Rahami.

The police work was little short of brilliant, but at first there was confusion about Rahami's personality pedigree. Born in Afghanistan, he was described by locals as "reserved," or as a "quiet young man who served fried chicken" or a "typical immigrant" (God forbid!).

- Meanwhile, a bomb had exploded in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, with a second explosive found nearby. Police named Rahami as a suspect in both the Chelsea and New Jersey bombings.

By now we were finding out more about the lad who worked at his family's ironically named First American chicken restaurant. It seems that, despite his above-noted homely demeanor, he had been able to garner the necessary energy to travel to Afghanistan and also to Pakistan. Not only to Afghanistan in general, but to Kandahar in particular; and not only Pakistan in general, but to Quetta in particular - and sometimes for months at a time.

Now, both cities happen to be the hard-bitten, closed-off, "don't-go-there" capitals of the worst terrorist groups and the varied types of Talibans. Americans arriving in Quetta are not expected to survive. Yet no one put Rahami on any terrorist watch list or even slapped his wrist for bad behavior.

- Now we move to St. Cloud, Minnesota. Dahir Adan, 20 years of age, was the son of one of the thousands of Somali refugees brought to that cold northern state when Somalia, on the northeastern shores of Africa, collapsed into chaos in the 1990s. The young Minnesotan was described by friends as "unassuming."

His family said they were in "deep shock" and "devastated" after Dahir left home Saturday night to buy an iPhone in a Macy's store, taking a knife with him and, in a horrendous rampage, stabbing 10 people before being shot and killed by an off-duty police officer. People described his eyes during the attack as "dead."

So, all right, where exactly are we?

Liberal America wants us to bring in more and more refugees, immigrants, migrants, documented and, yes, undocumented aliens. It is only good, it is only nice.

As to conservative America, we will deal here only with Donald Trump and "Trumpism," because he is the candidate who has seriously introduced immigration into the American conversation. He, of course, wants to take extraordinarily strong measures to keep Muslims out and America's virtues "in."

We should support neither one. The truth is we are faced with countries where many people hate us and wish us poorly. (Much of it is our fault. Funny, isn't it, how other peoples just hate it when we invade their countries?)

But for now, we are where we are, and it is only sensible to restrict emigration to the U.S. from countries with large groups of people who feel they are truly at war with us. It is perhaps inevitable that the Rahamis of New Jersey and the Adans of St. Cloud - and the Tsarnaevs of the Boston Marathon massacre or the Farooks and Maliks of the San Bernardino killings - harbor deep waves of cultural hatred for America.

If we had any sense, we would be profoundly concerned about our OWN cultural sense of ourselves - and about our own identity. For that is what the entire immigration talk is really about. It is why England voted to leave the E.U. and why Angela Merkel just lost her first Berlin vote ever; and it is why even Mexico has a virtual police wall on its southern border to keep others out.

Americans want only what other peoples have always wanted: They want to feel they control their lives, and too much uncontrolled immigration, particularly from hostile countries or parts of them, threatens Americans more than anything.

An American does not have to be a "Trumpist" to feel all of this or to know it. One only has to be a common-sensical citizen of our nation.

Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.

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