Xenophilia

George Steiner, proud diasporist, once lamented (in an interview conducted, unfortunately, by a woman who seemed intent on pressing into Steiner's hand a one-way ticket to a settlement on the West Bank; Steiner, courtly old-world gentleman he is, politely and repeatedly (and thus rather comically) demurred) that although the Greek word xenos means both 'foreigner' and  'guest'  (elsewhere in the interview, he quotes Heidegger, "We are the guests of life."), it survives in English only as 'xenophobia,' not 'xenophilia.' The latter is an idea the world desperately needs right now. Speaking as a narcissistic xenophile, one who loves being a foreigner, who has never felt more heimlich, more 'at home,' than when traveling in a foreign country, blurring the 'other' line among all the other lines, I think it would be an excellent idea to counter Trump's fascist xenophobia not with the tepid, wishy-washy corporatist liberal xenophobia of "We must secure our borders, but..." but with the xenophilia of "Hello, refugee from Central American terrorism. Welcome to the richest country in the history of the world. How many IHOP pancakes would you like?....No, no, of course we're not going to rip your children out of your arms and put them in cages. What do you think we are, a bunch of crazy fascist assholes!?"