The other day I heard Mitt Romney say that “the American people are suffering as a result of what is happening at the border,” and I couldn’t help but think, What is he talking about? Who among “the American people” is “suffering as a result of what is happening at the border,” and what does this “suffering” consist of?
Look, I really don’t know “what is happening at the border.” Which is to say, I don’t live anywhere near the U.S.-Mexico border, and I don’t know anyone who does; I’m not a migrant, and I don’t know any migrants; I’ve never needed, wanted or tried to cross the border, to seek asylum or for any other reason, and I don’t know anyone who has; I’m not involved with CBP or ICE or any other governmental agency with border-related responsibilities, and I don’t know or talk to anyone who is; I’m not an immigration lawyer, I don’t know any immigration lawyers, and I didn’t study immigration law or policy in law school.
What I’m trying to say is that I have no first-hand knowledge, experience or observation of What Is Happening™ at The Border®, and it doesn’t seem to be affecting me personally, not in real time or in any perceptible way; I certainly am not “suffering as a result of what is happening at the border” as Romney insisted. Literally everything I personally know about this subject is what I’m reading, hearing, and seeing from various media sources, including social media; one hundred percent of it is second-, third- or fourth-hand, none first-hand. And I suspect that’s true for well north of 90% of Americans. If I didn’t watch, listen to, or read any news or social media I wouldn’t even know that The Border® was a thing, let alone the thing that most people seem to be telling pollsters is their number-one “issue” going into the 2024 election.
How can it be that an “issue” that affects very few people directly, of which very few people have first-hand knowledge or experience, or feel any actual effects (let alone deleterious effects) in real time, is by far the number-one “issue” on most voters’ minds in an election year?
Of course, there are plenty of standard and obvious answers to that question that I won’t get into here; we all know what they are.
I realize there’s a tinge of selfishness in the foregoing remarks, because there obviously are people who do have first-hand knowledge and experience with what’s happening at the U.S.-Mexico border and are directly affected by it, including people who live and work in the cities to which Govs. Abbott and DeSantis are indiscriminately sending migrants on buses just to troll the Libs and are responsible for dealing with that. The snarky use of the ™ and ® symbols above and below is not in any sense meant to belittle the plight of migrants themselves (who are suffering as a result of what is happening at the border) or those in the U.S. who are directly and adversely affected by it; it’s meant to call attention to the use of terms like “The Border” (and “Illegal Immigrants”) and phrases like “What Is Happening At The Border” as campaign slogans, political talking points, and trigger words, not just by Republicans but by the conservative media and the mainstream Both Sides® media — and to distinguish the real thing from its imaginary counterpart.
The more I think about this, the more parallels I see with the last time a Democratic president was serving his first term in office and the big thing on everyone’s mind (i.e., the subject of daily Republican freakouts and Both Sides® media stenography) was The Debt®. Remember the fake so-called “Tea Party”? We don’t hate Obama because he’s Black, we’re just Concerned About The Debt.™ Or my favorite, We’re just sick of The Spending™. Then, as now, The Debt® and The Spending® are things that most people only hear about on TV and on the radio and read about on blogs and social media; of which practically no one has any first-hand knowledge or experience, or feels any actual real-time effects in their daily life. That if they went all Henry David Thoreau to the woods to live deliberately, off the grid and without access to media, they wouldn’t even know existed, let alone in what form.
I used to tell self-professed “Tea Party” proxy-martyrs that they could not possibly be “sick of The Spending” (or The Debt) when they don’t actually know what it is, let alone feel or experience any effects of it and wouldn’t even know it existed if they weren’t being told. You can’t genuinely be “sick of” anything that doesn’t actually affect you personally in any real, perceptible way. Heck, if Fox News told you that The Debt was $20 trillion, The New York Both Sides® Times told you it was $13 trillion, and one of your Facebook friends told you it was $50 trillion, how would you know which number was correct? And what difference would it make in your daily life? The reality is, you’re “sick of The Spending” and “concerned about The Debt” because Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity told you that that’s what you should be “sick of” and “concerned about.” Barring that, you wouldn’t even be thinking about those things.
What The Debt®, The Spending® and now The Border® have in common is that while they are real, they are also figments of Republican and conservative-media imagination. Republicans have a knack and a habit of running campaigns against fictionalized versions of real people and things, and when it comes to things like The Debt, The Spending and The Border they have the added advantage of a near-universal lack of first-hand knowledge or experience on the part of the voting public. So they create mirror-universe, alternate-reality, comic-book versions of real people, real things, and real problems, which they can fashion into literally any shape they want, saturate their own airwaves and social-media channels with it, and force the mainstream Both Sides® media to play along, to make it a central issue, exaggerate its importance, and demand that Democrats respond.
We all know why they do this; the Republican Party exists for the sole purpose of enriching the wealthy, powerful men, corporations and industries that own that Party, and ensuring that they are never held accountable for the harm they cause to the public, workers, consumers or the environment. Literally everything Republicans do is aimed either at that objective, or at distracting the public from the fact that literally everything they do is aimed at that objective.
Simply stated, we are at the unfortunate point where The Border® is an imaginary thing, and an imaginary “problem,” standing in for the real one. Just like The Debt® and The Spending® three presidential terms ago. We fell for it in 2010. And we may be falling for it again.