https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... migration/
tl;dr - It's a grifty, culty griftcult. Nothing less, nothing more. Rubes are both consumer and producer.In the run-up to the expiration of covid-19 restrictions on those seeking asylum, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly predicted that our country would be overrun by migrant hordes from the south. Hundreds of thousands would “rush the border,” the Georgia Republican proclaimed, warning of an “Imminent Invasion!”
Since the Title 42 border policy ended last week, the average number of migrants crossing the border has dropped. Yet Greene hasn’t missed a beat: On Thursday, she introduced impeachment articles against President Biden, proclaiming that the supposed migrant invasion is central to her case. She raged: “He is a direct threat to our national security.”
This disconnect captures a truth about today’s MAGA-fied GOP: The idea that our border is under perpetual siege isn’t intended as an empirical declaration about a concrete challenge facing the country. Rather, it’s a kind of animating myth, one manufactured to mobilize political energy. In this, it’s essential to MAGA’s identity.
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Greene and other Republicans were plainly salivating at the prospect of a large spike of migrant arrivals after the Title 42 policy ended. We can surmise this because now that this spike hasn’t materialized, House Republicans are finding all kinds of creative new ways to simply pretend that it has.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), for instance, raged at CNN for posting border-crossing numbers and claiming there’s been “still no surge” after the border policy’s end. But CNN was right: The numbers did show a drop.
Still another House Republican tweeted a video of migrants storming the border to depict Biden’s supposed failure to prepare for Title 42’s end. In fact, the video was months old and depicted an isolated group misled by disinformation about the border, which says nothing about Title 42.
Meanwhile, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) responded to the drop in crossings by demanding more concessions from Democrats on immigration. Among far-right Republicans, after the post-Title 42 surge failed to materialize, support for impeaching Mayorkas actually grew.
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The GOP addiction to border invasion imagery is such that many Republicans can see migrant children — once worthy of bipartisan assistance — only as a threat to be repulsed. They want to impeach Mayorkas — and possibly Biden — partly over a border surge that hasn’t happened. All this comes as Republicans regularly hold border photo-ops in buffoonish military gear and spend huge sums on ads depicting the border as something out of an apocalyptic video game.
The fantasy that the border is constantly in chaos has become a marker of MAGA identity. It’s a myth that MAGA Republicans want “border security” that is genuinely achievable or see the border as a policy problem to be solved in any meaningful sense. The border crisis, or at least the version that Greene and her cohorts keep invoking, exists largely in the collective MAGA imagination.
