Johann Heinrich Füssli, The Nightmare, 1781
I had the weirdest, most vivid and disturbing dream in a long time last night. As with any proper nightmare, all the elements were drawn from my own experiences. In the dream I was returning from an immigrant rights conference in Germany (where I actually did volunteer at a refugee center in 2016). In the dream I was traveling with only carry-on luggage, had already checked through security, and was waiting for my flight back home.
In the dream a Turkish woman airport employee (?) comes up to me, points to my carry-on, and tells me I need to sort out an issue with the luggage. It seems I haven’t paid duty taxes and it needs to be inspected again. I’m not sure of the significance of the woman’s identity except that when I lived in Germany half a century ago my neighbors were all Turkish Gastarbeiter.
Then the woman informs me that I have to return to the security checkpoint, which I do obligingly, though with a little trepidation. As soon as I am literally two feet inside the glassed doorway, two burly American security officials grab me. In my dream I observe my own arrest as if I were watching another person. My hands are handcuffed behind me, not with ties but with steel handcuffs.
One of the officials informs me that I’m in violation of some law no one has ever heard of involving moving to Canada to avoid the draft, that I’m guilty of illegal emigration. Indeed, I lived in Canada after the Viet Nam War ended, and my draft lottery numbers had fortunately kept me out of it. So in my dream I know the charges don’t really apply to me. I remain calm and am simply annoyed.
Throughout the arrest, my emotional sense is that someone has made a stupid mistake but that it can and will eventually get sorted out. But there is also a feeling of dread that the government can find something, anything, even if it’s actually nothing, and I’ll end up in a jail cell if they really want me there. And then it dawns on me that I am not in the U.S. and I start to wonder where these people are going to take me.
The next moment I’m awake.
In my post-dream fog I still feel stunned. As the sun comes up and I return to the quiet world I always wake to, something is really different. I have a dark foreboding that soon the Administration will start using any pretext to round up and “disappear” Leftists and dissidents as they are now doing with the undocumented, asylum seekers, and birthright citizens, and intend to do with naturalized citizens.
I don’t know if all this means I need a shrink or not, but you don’t really need a shrink to know that the American Dream has now been replaced by a fucking nightmare.
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