By Rachel Wagner (January 8, 2019)
Has anyone else noticed that Trump only talks about one issue at a time, like for months?
For a while it was Hillary. For a while North Korea. Healthcare for a while. There were others.
Now it’s nothing but wall wall wall. This successive “single issue” approach is likely intended to just keep us fighting with one another. It’s a well-known divisive tactic, to reduce all difference down to one oversimplified thing and people feel compelled to yay or nay and define their opponents based on that.
The truth is, many of us are OK with the wall we have. We don’t oppose walls in principle, though they would depict us that way. What we oppose is rank racism and indifference to the poor and a lack of responsibility for past damaging foreign policy. But they’ve pushed us to to holler “no wall!” And then they flip around and say we don’t care about security at all because we want “no wall” which of course isn’t true for most people. They are “for” the wall, which means what exactly?
I think for them it’s purely a symbol of isolationism and generalized racism. And Trump, or perhaps his handlers (because I think he does listen to the likes of Hannity) laugh while we battle over a symbol that means different things to each of us and fight with one another.