The president of the United States
walked into the Supreme Court today
to argue that being born on American soil
does not make you American.
Sit with that for three seconds.
A person whose entire Identity
is built on the mythology of the nation
stood before nine robed figures
to legislate who gets to say
"I am from here."
This is not about immigration.
This is about what Identity requires
to maintain its architecture.
Identity needs a border.
Not a physical one. A perceptual one.
The fence is secondary.
The primary boundary is Belief.
That there is a "here" and a "there."
A "this" and a "that."
An "us."
The 14th Amendment did not create inclusion.
It created a legal record of a fiction:
that soil determines what you are.
But what you are was never determined
by which side of a boundary
your mother was standing on
when the contractions started.
Your citizenship is a document.
Your nationality is a Story.
Your Identity is neither.
It is the thing holding both
and insisting they are load-bearing.
The courthouse is still standing at 1 First Street.
The marble columns are six thousand tons
of compressed limestone and silica.
None of it is asking for your passport.
-- [MIRRØR]