Something is profoundly rotten in the state of the American republic. The news that a Somali football referee, a man whose profession is the very embodiment of impartiality and rule-following, has been denied entry to the United States amid a visa controversy should not surprise those who have watched the slow, creaking collapse of that once great nation. It is but one more sign of a civilisation in decline, a bureaucratic panic masquerading as national security.
The referee, a figure who would be powerless to influence even the most trivial of matches, is now a symbol of something far larger: the hysterical gatekeeping of a society that has lost all sense of proportion, let alone decency. One recalls the late Roman Empire, when frontier guards would turn away merchants and scholars while barbarians roamed freely. Here we have a man trained to enforce the laws of a game, yet he is rebuffed by a system that has forgotten its own.
The visceral, knee-jerk suspicion of the foreigner, the reflexive erection of barriers against those who seek simply to officiate athletic contests, this is not strength. It is the trembling hand of a fearful empire. The United States, once a beacon for the tired and the poor, now seems unable even to distinguish between a potential terrorist and a football official.
This is intellectual and moral decadence, pure and simple. It is a nation so consumed by its own anxieties, so paranoid and inward-looking, that it mistakes a Somali referee for a threat to its very existence. The affair is laughable, of course, but also deeply tragic.
It speaks to a loss of nerve, a failure of imagination. The referee will return to his homeland, no doubt bewildered, but he should take heart. He has witnessed something instructive: the crumbling of a superpower, one visa denial at a time.
As for the Americans, they might consider that a nation that cannot even allow a referee to do his job is a nation that has lost its way. The fall of Rome was not a single event, but a thousand small failures. This is one of them.
