Vox Populi:

In a Hostile United States

Today, during my slog through the Substack messages, newspaper headline notices, and podcast reminders that hit my inbox every morning, two stories drew my attention. Both had to do with the fact that human beings have always moved around this planet, beginning long before there were any countries or maps to display the borders where one nation ends and another begins. I was reminded of a decades-old song by the Venezuelan singer Soledad Bravo, “Punto y Raya” — “The Dot and the Dash”:

“Entre tu pueblo y mi pueblo hay un punto y una raya,
la raya dice no hay paso el punto vía cerrada”

“Between your people and mine,” says the song, “there’s a dot and a dash. The dash says, ‘No entrance,’ and the dot, ‘The road is closed.’” Bravo goes on to say that, with all those dots and dashes outlining the borders of nations, a map looks like a telegram. If you walk through the actual world, though, what you see are mountains and rivers, forests and deserts, but no dots or dashes at all.

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