It might be tempting to think that President Trump’s border wall represents a more accurate, hard-bitten assessment of how the world works. The border wall, in contrast, is a monument to disenchantment, to a brutal geopolitical realism: Racism was never transcended; there’s not enough wealth to go around; not everyone in the global economy can have a seat at the table. It was also bound to produce, in the symbol of a wall, its own governing illusion. Mr. Trump figured out that to talk about the border, and to promise a wall, was a way of acknowledging capitalism’s limits, its costs, without having to challenge the status quo. But unable to offer an alternative other than driving the existing agenda forward at breakneck speed, he pledged instead to build a wall.

Source: New York Times February 21, 2019 00:00 UTC