Ah, here's some more of all of that "winning" that President Trump promised.
Americans will now need a visa, in addition to an updated passport, in order to visit Europe, beginning in 2021.
This has been mulled over for some time, mostly as a result of the hostile policies that Trump has shown towards Europe, and towards the rest of the world more generally.
Of course, it should be pointed out that most Trump supporters will not be bothered or inconvenienced by this, since I suspect most of them do not do a significant amount of traveling to begin with.
There is a quote from Mark Twain that I really like, which pretty much is on point about the beneficial aspects of traveling and, by extension, how corrosive it tends to be to make a point of not traveling too much, how insular and self-absorbed people can become. Indeed, many such people will be fine with that, and those are the people who should be traveling more frequently, to challenge their previously held beliefs. Here is the Mark Twain quote:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one's life."
Once again, the mindset of Trump and his supporters has created enough friction to be reflected in official policies from other countries.
Of course, the ignorance that they often seem to take such pride in caused this in the first place. And by making it more difficult to travel, and by making other nations more hostile and suspicious towards American political policies and actions, it almost assures that these ridiculous prejudices and general ignorance that too many Americans bask in will continue for the long term, well beyond the time when Trump has left office.
All that winning...
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