USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why are they Destroying My United States of America? : Nation as Imaginative Space

I have never been there but I see the US as mine in terms of a vision of creative possibility.

Elon Musk was one of my embodiments of such possibilities.

Why are these people destroying my dreams?

They are making nonsense of legendary institutions and values.

The right to hold and pursue views different from that of the government.

Some of the world's greatest institutions, such as elite US universities, are being recurrently humiliated and gutted of their inspirational essence.

Freedom of universities from ideologically driven government interference.

The presence of robustly funded academic systems, free from systemic shocks.

The US Presidency as a bastion of a degree of mature statesmanship even in the midst of evil US foreign policies.

The US as a global melting pot where people go for the opportunity to reach the stars.

All these are being destroyed.

These people are destroying my dreams.

It is not fair.

Every country is a geographical construct, an economic and cultural system, an interpersonal network and an idea or network of ideas.

The sense of identification with a nation enables those identifiers to"own the nation" in an imaginative sense, a metaphorical ownership not confined to citizens of that nation or even those who live there.

It is such a sense of "ownership" that has  motivated migration to the US as a place where practically anyone may more readily maximize their potential in a liberal social environment than in other places, including the cultural ancestor of the US, Western Europe.

Trump's strategies imply the destruction of this image of the US

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