WHEN a youthful but electric Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, there was much talk about what it would mean to America to elect its first black president. The very prospect of it was exhilarating. It tapped into our truest democratic ideals, a major national milestone and giant leap in rectifying our racist past. Both black and white Americans shared the symbolism of the moment.

Here’s a fairly recent anecdote about how Germans regard their media: On New Year’s Eve, 2015, 2,000 immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, many of whom were asylum seekers, sexually assaulted 1,200 German women of European origin. It happened in cities all across the country.

Since when did a government-issued ID come to represent a return to Jim Crow and, even more absurdly, the kind of mental challenge that would have stumped Albert Einstein?