Rasmussen: Support For Border Fence Up To 68%

Ten percent here, ten percent there, and pretty soon you're talking about a real mandate.

Support for the building of a fence along the Mexican border has reached a new high, and voters are more confident than ever that illegal immigration can be stopped.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 68% of U.S. voters now believe the United States should continue to build a fence on the Mexican border. That’s up nine points from March when the Obama administration halted funding for the fence and the highest level of support ever.
Just 21% oppose the continued building of the border fence.

Support for the fence is strong across all demographic groups. But while 76% of Mainstream voters think the United States should continue to build the fence, 67% of the Political Class are opposed to it.

I always enjoy how twits speak of the symbolism of a thing.

That's why the "Political Class" -- the Gee Aren't I Terribly Enlightened? crowd -- opposes this. They talk about that a lot -- the symbolism of the thing.

How about discussing the reality of it? It's a fence. Its real purpose -- in real-world, real-time reality -- is to halt people from crossing a border. A real border, mind you, although on that point I concede a border is a more abstract concept than, say, a shoe.

It doesn't symbolically represent a division between the countries. It actually is a division between the countries.

And what is wrong with that?

I'm noting this because a few weeks ago I saw a guy at the riots in Toronto who complained that the police barricades were a symbol representing a division between the protesters and the G-20 representatives.

And I thought, "Gee, no, actually it's not a symbol of a division; it really is, in fact, a physical division." Because, see, you're rioting. (And not symbolically in riot, either.) You can tell it's a real-world division because now you can't get to the G-20 conference center and throw rock-metaphors through the window-symbols.

I think there is a type of person -- well-represented in the "Political Class" and in progressive politics -- that has learned, from college, that the Abstract is everything, that Real Smart People are always focused on the Abstract, on metaphors, on symbols.

And they seem to disregard the concrete, the real, almost as a dirty thing, something of concern to the plebians, who cannot of course grasp the subtleties of high representational thinking like they can. You know, with their "symbolic" barricades and all.

They spoke of the Gaza Wall the same way -- that it symbolized the separation of the peoples. When it fact it did rather more than that. It actually separated them. Because one of those peoples was murdering and butchering the other. (And, again, I stress: They did so in a non-metaphoric manner.)

I don't think this is an important point in terms of a slogan or a manifesto or that sort of thing. I don't think you can build a politics around the Concrete. (What would that bumper sticker look like?)

It's just an observation of a type of intellectually-insecure individual who parrots the pattern of thinking of his professors (who once represented intellectual authority to them -- Symbolically, of course) and elevates, always, the Abstract above the Real.

I just tend to distrust this sort of divorced-from-tangible-reality worship of the abstract. Obviously -- duh -- abstract thinking is important. It is, in certain ways, I suppose, a higher form of thinking than thinking of the concrete.

But not when it is shorn of all rootings to the actual world.

This is how evil happens. You can abstract any evil you choose into some esoteric "greater good."

posted by Ace at 03:37 PM

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