Fake Borders

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Clarissa

August 26, 2015

Chinese journalists were driven to a fit of hysterical laughter when they saw who is guarding the long border between China and Russia:

The border is extremely long and there are no resources to guard it. As a result, scarecrow soldiers were placed on watch towers to fake a military presence on the border.

A fake border guard of a fluid border is the perfect symbol of the post-nation – state world. In Europe, Russia, the US border guards are powerless to stop migratory flows. And you know what that means: good-bye welfare state.

It’s interesting how all presidential candidates in the US promise to restore the illusion of a robust nation-state.

“I will magically make state borders not fluid again!”

“I will police your morality like in the good old days of the nation-state!”

“I will bring back welfare!”

“I’ll bring back the sense of commonality, of clearly defined us versus clearly defined them!”

“I’ll introduce an external or an internal enemy (Mexicans, banksters, anchor babies) for us to use as a prop in our collective identity building.”

If you take all candidates’ promises together, you’ll have the perfect definition of the nation-state. I understand why they are running on nation-state nostalgia. All we know is the past, and for the last 200 years, all we’ve known is the nation-state.

But here’s the question: might we be missing an opportunity to prepare for inevitable transformations as we indulge our understandable nostalgia for the nation-state? Isn’t this grasping of an illusion similar to the sad scarecrow of a border guard on a formerly relevant border?

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14 responses to “Fake Borders”

Vic Crain

August 26, 2015

Is the post nation state model something that only works for an elite? Or is it a guarantee of a social model that won’t work for anyone?

The power of a Hitler, Hamas, and ISIS is help for the poor and downtrodden. That’s the power to turn elites into roadkill. The latest example was the beheading of the curator of Roman artifacts in Palmyra last week.

Human nature entails fighting for survival. Push people far enough and they will fight back. Home invasions were a largely unknown crime a few years ago in the US. However, people are finally getting the message — don’t rob others who are poor, go after the ones with some money. If you want to torture and kill them in the process, so be it.

Americans are human, and the risk of anarchy or fascism here is real.

In that context, Trump may play the role of a pressure valve, letting some discontent out without trashing the entire political system.

However, if you expect to wind down the welfare state and have Americans meekly go along with it and die, that’s not going to happen. (If that sounds extreme, the life expectancy for the poor in the US is shrinking, but not to the level that it has penetrated the public consciousness. It will, eventually.)

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1. Clarissa
  
  August 26, 2015
  
  The post-nation state will bring (is already bringing) a rapid and dramatic social and economic stratification. Those who can achieve high mobility (intellectual, geographic, psychological, etc) and thrive within it will love the new world order because their opportunities will soar. But those who can’t adapt to mobility as fast or as easily will be lumpenized.
  
  There is no doubt right now that there WI be quite a large underclass of the generationally poor, jobless, and marginalized who will be kept in their ghettos, growing endlessly obese and stuck to their screens.
  
  Right now the question is how large we will allow this class to be.
  
  I’m sorry to sound so gloomy but we’ve got to see reality clearly in order to do something about it. We are traversing a crucial moment and unless we start doing something now, we will see huge swatches of humanity permanently displaced to the margins of modernity.
  
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  1. Vic Crain
    
    August 26, 2015
    
    If it plays out as you describe, it is the recipe for the Fourth Reich. The poor outnumber the elite and have the weapons. We won’t have to worry about arguments over tenure — most academics will be dead or in prison.
    
    We can envision multiple space stations; the science elite will be there. With the development of space agriculture and space industry, these stations will be independent of the planet and may in fact leave. A Putin or Hitler clone will be the political leader on earth. Wealth is appropriated and redistributed along any one of several models (Soviet or South American). Those not conforming to the ideal citizen are erased.
    
    In any revolution, one-third are militantly for, one-third are militantly against and one-third just want the fighting to go elsewhere. That distribution didn’t stop the French, Russian or American revolutions. If the world plays as you suggest, it won’t stop the next one either. I see the current uptick in violence as a precursor of what may come, not as random one-offs.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      August 26, 2015
      
      No, the marginalized will not start any uprising. There won’t be any incentive. They’ll have abundant food, great entertainment, no need to work, tons of happy pills.
      
      Let’s not look to the past because there are very new circumstances at play now. Today’s poverty is the poverty of the obese (in the developed countries, obviously), not the poverty of the desperately hungry.
      
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      1. Vic Crain
        
        August 26, 2015
        
        I couldn’t disagree with you more. We have poverty and malnutrition in this country. However, as we’ve seen with the middle class kids signing up for ISIS, there are emotional factors that can be decisive, not just need. The elite expects the police and army to protect them, and the police and army members aren’t members of that elite. As we drive inequality to extreme levels, the notion that people will show infinite complacency seems naive. The notion that the elite has some kind of entitlement is no more logical than a teen being entitled to a car.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        August 26, 2015
        
        Bread and circus – the eternal contributors to complicity. And neither have ever been as inventive and abundant.
        
        As for the bored rich kids, fluid borders will solve that problem. As they float away towards excitement, immigrants who are still capable of enjoying material well-being will come to take their place.
        
        The problem is not a violent eruption. The problem is that allowing a huge number of people to slip into animal – like existence between a plate of slop and a dozen screens is immoral and simply tragic. This is a huge waste of human potential.
        
        But it’s not set in stone. This can still be avoided or at least minimized.
        
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2. Clarissa
  
  August 26, 2015
  
  And I agree completely on the subject of Trump. This is something we will see more and more often: a populist leader who will give the marginalized the illusion of relevance in exchange for their obedience.
  
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NG

August 26, 2015

I wonder what the candidates in the American electoral process would say about the Haskell free library in Vermont where the border runs through the middle of the reading room and the books are on the Canadian side while the check out desk is on the American side?

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el

August 27, 2015

Up to 50 people, presumed to be asylum-seekers, have been found dead in the back of a lorry in Austria.

Officials referred to the dead as migrants, and local media reports suggested they died of “suffocation” after being trapped in the lorry’s trailer. A police manhunt has been launched to find the driver, who is suspected of smuggling the victims into the country.
…
The incident comes as Europe faced a continent-wide migrant crisis, with neighbouring Hungary reporting 3,241 illegal entry attempts – a record number – on Wednesday.

Hungary is close to completing a razor-wire fence spanning the full 110-mile length of its border with Syria, prompting a race for migrants to reach the effective start of the Schengen Area of free movement within the EU.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/austria-lorry-migrants-eu-refugee-crisis-50-asylumseekers-found-dead-in-a-lorry-10474464.html

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1. el
  
  August 27, 2015
  
  Saw a comment:
  
  // Dear Adam, there is a factual mistake in the article. It should say “Serbia” instead of “Syria” in the last paragraph.
  
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el

August 27, 2015

\ In Europe, Russia, the US border guards are powerless to stop migratory flows. And you know what that means: good-bye welfare state.

Why not give welfare only to citizens, while giving exactly zero to illegal immigrants / migrants / refugees / other name?

If somebody enters a country, let alone illegally, it doesn’t mean the country has to help them.

\ No, the marginalized will not start any uprising. There won’t be any incentive. They’ll have abundant food…

If millions of migrants enter Europe with idea of endless welfare, who will feed them? I thought electricity, water, gas, etc. do cost quite a lot.

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1. Clarissa
  
  August 27, 2015
  
  Nobody in the developed countries is prepared to see crowds of abandoned children or sick elderly roaming the streets. In practice, limiting welfare to a certain category defeats the entire point of welfare.
  
  Immigrants will all work as we always do. The problem is not that the immigrants don’t want to work. The problem is specifically in the welfare services: pensions, medical care, child protective services, shelters for abused women, etc.
  
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  1. Vic Crain
    
    August 27, 2015
    
    The oft quoted line from a GOP congressman from Tennessee is about letting the poor starve. There are folks on the far right who would welcome that, much as Paul said in 2011 that a man in a coma without insurance shouldn’t receive medical treatment. (Actually, Paul said it was up to the guy in the coma to fend for himself. The statement in brain dead on so many levels.)
    
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Anthony Bartlow

September 1, 2015

Drivers have been baffled after they spotted the spoof signs claiming to be from ‘the Scottish Border Agency’ as they drive past the checkpoint at the border at Carter Bar- the point at which the A68 highway crosses from England into Scotland. Perhaps making light of the eve heated independence debate, the sign reads that the checkpoint will open on Friday, September 19 – the day after voters go to the poll.

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