The United States, a sprawling experiment in cognitive dissonance that insists it is a 'shining city on a hill' while its own foundation cracks under the weight of partisan rot, has decided to pull the ladder up. In a move that reeks of bureaucratic exhaustion and a total collapse of diplomatic utility, the US has paused the processing of permanent residency visas for applicants from 75 countries. Twenty-six of these are in Africa, because if there is one thing the American State Department excels at, it is treating an entire continent like a single, inconvenient paperwork error. This isn't a strategic masterstroke; it’s a shrug from a hegemon that has given up on the pretense of being the world’s welcoming host and decided instead to play the role of the disgruntled bouncer at a club no one actually wants to enter anymore.

To be clear, the American 'dream' has long been a processed, pre-packaged commodity sold to the desperate, but this freeze is a new level of honesty. It tells 75 nations that the queue is no longer moving, not because of security—that’s the usual lie—but because the gears of the American machine are so choked with the grit of internal dysfunction that it can no longer perform the basic tasks of an empire. The Left will surely perform their scripted outrage, tweeting about inclusivity while ignoring that the bureaucracy they love is the very thing currently strangled by its own red tape. Meanwhile, the Right will celebrate this as a victory for 'sovereignty,' oblivious to the fact that isolationism is just another word for becoming irrelevant in a world that is rapidly learning to move on without them.

While the US builds its invisible wall, Nigeria is busy perfecting the art of the 'retroactive truth.' In Northern Kaduna, the Nigerian police have performed a stunning linguistic gymnastics routine, walking back their earlier, emphatic denials of a mass kidnapping. It turns out that dozens of worshippers were indeed snatched from three different churches over the weekend. For days, the official line was that nothing happened, a classic strategy of the modern state: if you ignore the tragedy hard enough, perhaps the reality will fold under the pressure of your incompetence. The police didn't suddenly find a conscience; they simply found it impossible to maintain the lie when the empty pews started screaming. This is the hallmark of governance in the 21st century: a series of denials followed by a reluctant admission of failure, leaving the citizenry to wonder why they pay for a security apparatus that only shows up to count the missing after the dust has settled.

In Kenya, we are presented with a 'heartwarming' tale that is actually a scathing indictment of state failure. A team of trained female motorcycle riders and nurses are now the primary means for expectant mothers to reach clinics. The media frames this as a triumph of local initiative and female empowerment. I see it as a desperate measure in a vacuum where a functional health system should exist. When a country’s infrastructure is so neglected and its roads so impassable that the only way to deliver a baby safely is on the back of a two-wheeled vehicle driven by a volunteer, you don't have a success story; you have a systemic collapse. It is the 'Uber-ification' of survival. We are expected to applaud the pluckiness of the nurses while ignoring the fact that the tax revenues intended for ambulances and paved roads have likely been siphoned off into the offshore accounts of the ruling elite.

This is the global landscape in its current, pathetic glory. On one side of the ocean, a decaying superpower shuts its doors because it can’t handle the admin; on the other, states can’t even admit when their people are being kidnapped from their houses of worship, and pregnant women are forced to rely on the precarious balance of a motorcycle to ensure their children are born in a clinic rather than a ditch. The through-line here is a total abdication of responsibility by every institution involved. From the high-ceilinged offices in Washington D.C. to the police precincts in Kaduna and the mud-slicked roads of rural Kenya, the message to humanity is clear: you are on your own. The structures meant to protect and facilitate life are either frozen, lying, or non-existent. We are living in a world of performative governance where the only thing that actually works is the propaganda used to cover up the smell of the rot.