Ruminating on the American condition some years ago, I invented a word to describe us as we are. America is a “geophobic” nation, I figured — a people with an aversion to the world’s spaces and populations that manifests as indifference to any genuine knowledge of either.

This indifference, this ignorance of other places and people — and Americans’ indifference to their ignorance — is perfectly evident as a thread running through the whole of American history.

Americans are, at bottom, a fearful people, spooked by what lies beyond their shores. Has this ever been more so than now, in the twilight of the empire?

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