So a football referee, one Artan by name, has the temerity to insist he has his papers in order. The United States, that beacon of due process and legal niceties, has apparently linked him to terror. One must laugh, or else weep at the sheer farce of the modern imperium.
This is the sort of episode that Gibbon would have savoured: a petty bureaucrat in a vast empire, clutching his documents as if they were a talisman against the caprice of power. But power, dear reader, is not moved by paper. It is moved by fear, by the need to be seen to act, by the paranoid fantasies of a security state that has long since lost any sense of proportion.
Artan may well have the right papers. He may be entirely innocent. That is not the point.
The point is that he is a convenient target, a way for Washington to demonstrate its vigilance without actually doing anything meaningful. The Roman Empire had its scapegoats too. Christians, Jews, barbarians.
Anyone who could be pointed at and blamed. The US has its terror suspects. And if you are a referee from some obscure corner of the world, you are as good as anyone.
The hysteria is the point. It keeps the populace in line. It justifies the endless expansion of surveillance and military action.
It allows the state to pose as the protector of the people, while in fact it is the people who need protection from the state. Artan should be grateful. He is now a part of history.
A footnote in the chronicle of a civilisation in decline. His papers may save him. They may not.
Either way, the lesson is clear: in the empire of fear, no one is safe.
