Against the Wall: From Mexico to Calais, Why the Idea of Division Is Taking Hold Andrew Solomon - The Guardian
go to original September 20, 2016

Mexican Americans talk to their relatives through the current border fence – the one that Donald Trump has promised to replace with a wall – between Mexico and the USA (Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images)

In August, Donald Trump went to Mexico to meet with President Peña Nieto. The question of why the Mexican leader set up this meeting baffled his few supporters and his many foes, but immediately after a supposedly cordial encounter at which Peña Nieto supposedly voiced Mexico’s concerns about Trump’s racism, the Republican candidate crossed the border to Arizona, where, within hours, he was repeating his tagline. To great applause, he declared: “We will build a great wall along the southern border, and Mexico will pay for the wall. One hundred percent.” Asked in another interview about other foreign visits he might make to inform his policies, he proudly said: “I’ve got no time to travel – America needs my attention now.” But can you pay attention to America while ignoring everywhere else? Except in the most literal sense, no country is an island.

Such provincialism is not exclusive to America. In May, two months before he was announced as the UK’s new foreign secretary, Boris Johnson won a prize for the best rude limerick written about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He had previously referred to Barack Obama as a “part-Kenyan president”. This smug, ungenerous rudeness might play well to some audiences at home, but it bespeaks a frightening disregard for the psychic intimacy that statecraft ordinarily requires.

The Brexit campaign drew on such jingoism to trivialise Europe’s hard-won peace. Given that most people dislike anyone who dislikes them, one major cost of Brexit is the sacrifice of good will it has occasioned. The unknown and its terrors are the topic of virtually every sci-fi movie and thriller. Brexit makes those countries that were once enemies into the unknown again; its belligerent reclusion invites enmity back into the equation. Trump’s egotism reflects a US egotism; the presumption – or at least the pretence – that the nation holds all the cards. Brexit reflects the same tendency in the UK. Both Trump and the Brexit campaign have exploited the real and urgent vulnerability of the traditional working class, but neither stands to help that demographic.

It can feel disorienting to contemplate borders as negotiable rather than fixed. History demonstrates that there are always people who wish to expand their borders to include additional territory, and those who wish to close them to preclude immigration. Old maps reflect constantly evolving political divisions; those territories that coincide with geological formations can have a reassuring aura of permanence, but even these can be breached. Walls seem to take over from geography, and DonaldTrump isn’t the only one to contemplate their fortressing singularity. Britain is planning to build “the great wall of Calais”, as it has been named in some areas of the press, in the hope of reducing illegal immigration into the UK, though it seems likely the wall will simply make refugees adopt a more circuitous route.

Read the rest at The Guardian

Related: Walls Are Popular Again, and Not Just Due to Donald Trump (PanAm Post)

Related: At a Border Fence, Families Are So Close and Yet So Far (Associated Press)

Related: Majority of American Voters Oppose Building Wall Along Border with Mexico (RTT News)

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