Portland observer., January 23, 2019, Page Page 13, Image 13

January 23, 2019
Page 13
O PINION
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The Wall Already Exists In Hearts and Minds
A barrier to
seeing immigrants
as people
m atthew J ohnson
My favorite album of
all time is Pink Floyd’s
The Wall. It should be
re-released given the
current (manufactured)
crisis. I’m not surprised that Roger Waters
is planning a show on the border to protest
Trump’s continued government shutdown
over funding for an ill-defined barrier that
has come to represent everything wrong
with his presidency: Lies, false promises,
fear, racism and simplistic solutions.
It’s important to emphasize that the
wall is more symbol than reality. Setting
aside the fact that the nearly-2,000-mile
border is already teeming with armed men
and barriers of various kinds, a Trumpian
“wall” already exists: the (abstract) wall
that blocks many Americans from seeing
migrants from Central America and Mex-
ico as people just like them.
While Trump was rightly condemned
for misappropriating the Game of
Thrones slogan “Winter Is Coming” by
taking the font and changing it to “The
Wall Is Coming,” the underlying analo-
gy is eerily correct. Although — spoiler
alert — the (mythical) wall is destroyed
by undead invaders (who only advance
during winter) at the end of the show’s
last season, for thousands of years it
served to separate the living not only
from the undead but also from each oth-
by
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the same feelings, needs, and aspirations
that they themselves possess.
Meanwhile, it remains lost on many
Israelis and American supporters of Israel
(not to mention Trump) that the so-called
“security fence” that illegally snakes
through Palestinian land is not only hid-
eous (I’ve seen it up close) but far more of
a barrier to peace than to terrorism.
Walls have been built for millennia,
most notably the Great Wall of China and
the Berlin Wall, with discouraging results.
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Somehow it remains lost to millions of
(especially) white Americans — even in the
21st century with all its forward-thinking
innovations and popular culture — that their
southern neighbors are not dangerous invaders
but people with largely the same feelings, needs,
and aspirations that they themselves possess.
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er. In a reversal of reality, those living
south of the wall disparaged the north-
erners as “wildlings,” portraying them as
amoral, violent, and uncivilized, while
the northerners denounced their southern
brethren for their cloistered arrogance.
Sound familiar?
The silver lining from Game of Thrones
is that the north and south eventually (sort
of) united against the undead, and, in
return for their help in the war to come,
the “wildlings” were permitted to settle
south of the wall for safety. It remains to
be seen (in season 8) whether this united
force will prevail, but the mythical uni-
verse has nevertheless solved a timeless
problem that those of us stuck here in re-
ality are still struggling with: xenophobic
nativism.
Somehow it remains lost to millions of
(especially) white Americans — even in
the 21st century with all its forward-think-
ing innovations and popular culture —
that their southern neighbors are not dan-
gerous invaders but people with largely
To conclude that this (still) nonexistent
wall that Mexico will surely not pay for
will be any different is just as absurd as
concluding that the ascension of an un-
qualified, hate- and fear-mongering nar-
cissist to the highest office in the land
would be a reason to celebrate. It is as if
we have learned nothing from history and
have forgotten how to think critically.
If a television show can get it right,
then why can’t we?
Matt Johnson, syndicated by PeaceV-
oice, is co-author of Trumpism.
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