<
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2022/jan/16/look-around-you-why-increasingly-polarized>
"The border’s like our back door,” a concrete salesman named Chris told me in
January 2017. “You leave it open, and anyone can walk right in.” It was the day
of Trump’s presidential inauguration, and we were chatting on the exhibition
floor of a trade show in Las Vegas, called World of Concrete. Circular saws,
cement mixers, gleaming new trucks – it was an unusual place to talk about the
politics of immigration.
But the simple promise of a concrete wall between the US and Mexico had flung a
business tycoon into the White House, and I wanted to understand what this was
about.
Chris was a millennial from a small town in western Ohio. With a trim beard and
short, sandy hair, he projected an air of casual self-sufficiency. “I don’t
really like neighbors,” he quipped, speaking with a dose of wry humor about how
far he chose to live from other people.
I was struck by the mismatch between the salesman’s genial manner and his
suspiciousness, his sense of anyone beyond his home or country as a potential
threat. I wondered, as we talked amid a sea of construction equipment, what it
would take to build genuine warmth and concern for outsiders, rather than such
walls.
For the last five years, I’ve crisscrossed the United States as an
anthropologist, pursuing conversation and debate between the coasts and
heartland. I set out in 2016 to grasp the appeal of the border wall, the
fantasy of sealing off the country with a stark, symbolic barrier. What I
learned is that such barricades appeal to many Americans because they resonate
with familiar boundaries in their daily lives."
Via Doug Senko, who wrote "This is quite insightful."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
