In A Trump World, I’ll Just Stay At Home — Musings Of A Colombian Author

-Essay-

BOGOTÁ — In June 2022, as my entry visa for that earthly paradise otherwise known as the United States had a year left before expiring, I paid the fees for an appointment to renew it with U.S. consular services in Bogotá.

Four months later, on Oct. 13, I received a reply that said: “Congratulations! We inform you that your appointment for fingerprinting at the CAS [Applicants Service Center] has been successfully confirmed. Once this step is completed, your documentation will be sent directly to the embassy and the application process for the B1B2 visa will be completed. You will only have to wait for the government’s final decision and the return of the documents.”

The congratulations seemed to suggested something marvellous was about to happen, except that below it was the date of the appointment, in bold: January 28, 2025 at 4:00 p.m. That is, two years and eight months after the initial request; in other words, it was just a few days ago.

Visa chaos

After the Jan. 26 spat over migrants between Colombian President Gustavo Petro and U.S President Donald Trump, I received an email to say all visa appointments had been cancelled on Trump’s orders. On Monday, Jan. 27, after Colombia had capitulated (with our characteristic dignity) to Trump’s threats and blackmail, the appointment was reconfirmed.

Early on Tuesday, Jan. 28, when I was flying to Bogotá (from Medellín), the appointment was cancelled again, because our president had had the brilliant idea (among so many) to send the presidential plane to pick up the Colombians being deported from the United States.

It’s all-round, unmitigated silliness

Brilliant, I say, with sarcasm, because if the Colombian deportees number in their hundreds of thousands (as Trump claims), the presidential plane would have to make endless round trips. Like a ferry. It can fit 50 people at most — just imagine the total fuel costs when fuel for a single trip costs around ,000, not to mention the cost of paying the pilots and flight staff, maintenance, delays and the like.

A basic estimate by any mathematical nullity tells you it’ll be.. a lot. Some million in fuel alone for some 200 return trips over eight months — all-round, unmitigated silliness!

Disillusioned observations

As I no longer had an appointment at 4 p.m. on Jan. 28, I had lunch instead with friends, returning to Medellín at night, obviously without a visa. Perhaps another email will arrive some day, with a new appointment, but I no longer care to go to have my picture and fingerprints taken.

Of all the crazy stuff Petro wrote on his phone and Twitter throughout the night, I agree with one point he made. Aside five or six exceptional cities with their universities and bustling literary activity, the United States has devised a lifestyle designed to bore you to death or drive you to suicide. An air-conditioned nightmare, as the novelist Henry Miller called it. I can happily live out the rest of my life without ever visiting MAGA America, with its renewed bout of imperialist fever and urge to baptize golf courses, buy Greenland, invade Panama and annex Canada.

Never in my life have I felt so clearly that the world is in the hands of complete idiots.

Populists with power, narcissists and megalomaniacs live in a parallel universe existing in their heads. In Petro’s head for example, he needed just three months to sign peace with the recalcitrant ELN guerrillas. With Trump, he said he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.

As the French philosopher Albert Camus observed, stupidity is always insists (la bêtise insiste toujours). Never in my life have I felt so clearly that the world is in the hands of complete idiots.

There is Argentina’s President Javier Milei calling climate heating a leftist plot, Venezuela’s self-styled President Nicolas Maduro and his narcostate behind the ELN (now killing and displacing people in the Catatumbo region), Petro insulting Trump but scared to call out Maduro, Nicaragua’s power couple, Daniel Ortega and his wife, vowing to build another cross-country canal within three years, and Trump cancelling international aid, reviving oil drilling and threatening, threatening and threatening. You’re better off staying at home.