Ideally, the Democrats would acknowledge that there is a real, legitimate and very painful terror of the changes brought by the economic and social fluidity that accompanies the erosion of the nation-state. People are freaking out, and it doesn’t look pretty, but their concerns are valid and need to be addressed. Both major political forces are using the fact that people who are scared of the changes direct their anger against immigrants or anybody else who embodies fluidity (e.g. transgender people). They are using it to strengthen their respective brands – whether through shaming the malcontents for their misplaced rage or stoking that rage.
I see no evidence of any political force in the US even trying to acknowledge that fluidity should be checked, at least to an extent. Ultimately, if we have no other plan but to embrace fluidity, then, as cynical as it sounds, the only way of avoiding violent explosions is to stun the malcontents into a mute, resentful obedience. This is why, the more I think about it, the more I support Trump’s wall. Let it be built because it does zero harm but at least it will serve as a symbolic bastion against inevitable change. And when those who want it will see that it doesn’t work, they will be stunned into silence until such rapidly approaching moment when fluidity will triumph completely.
Also, the people who are feeling so darn superior for adapting so well to fluidity and who keep mocking those who are less physically and intellectually fluid, your time, too, will come. And then the younger, the more agile, the more unburdened and the more rootless competitors will laugh at you just as loudly as you are laughing now. Neoliberalism divides and conquers. And it already defeated everybody who celebrates their sophistication and superiority over some other poor schmuck who is simply left behind (economically or philosophically, it’s all the same) two minutes earlier.
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