Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says the entire southern border wall with Mexico is being painted black to deter illegal immigration, at President Trump's request.
The issue isn’t about thwarting the plan. The Wall already doesn’t work. Even conservative think tanks will admit to that much.
The issue is coming back to The Wall as a cultural rallying point. Build it 10’ taller. Build two walls. Put turrets on the walls. Patrol with drones. Add more barbed wire. Unleash sharks with laser beams on their heads into the Rio Grande. Litter the border with radioactive waste.
Anything to get people to turn their eyes south and say “Aaaah! Invasion! It must be stopped!” The Wall is just the latest panacea for a problem these people invented. They’re going to keep coming back and re-imagining it in between cooking up increasingly elaborate hoaxes about armies of brown people marching across it to Steal our Freedom.
The issue isn’t about thwarting the plan. The Wall already doesn’t work. Even conservative think tanks will admit to that much.
The issue is coming back to The Wall as a cultural rallying point. Build it 10’ taller. Build two walls. Put turrets on the walls. Patrol with drones. Add more barbed wire. Unleash sharks with laser beams on their heads into the Rio Grande. Litter the border with radioactive waste.
Anything to get people to turn their eyes south and say “Aaaah! Invasion! It must be stopped!” The Wall is just the latest panacea for a problem these people invented. They’re going to keep coming back and re-imagining it in between cooking up increasingly elaborate hoaxes about armies of brown people marching across it to Steal our Freedom.
It’s literally the wall song from Hadestown.
The percentage of the population for whom 3 seconds of thought is too much to ask is disheartening. But also nothing new.
It’s not the quantity of thought but the quality that disturbs me.