"Fences work and the walls work and separations work. They afford to any nation the delay of entry"
About this Quote
Hunter’s line is a politician’s hymn to friction. The blunt repetition - “Fences work and the walls work and separations work” - isn’t accidental; it’s the cadence of certainty, engineered for soundbites and committee rooms. No qualifiers, no tradeoffs, no cost-benefit math. Just “work.” The rhetoric treats borders like hardware: install barrier, reduce problem.
The tell is the pivot to “delay.” He’s not promising absolute security, only time. That’s a strategic concession dressed up as confidence. “Delay of entry” reframes migration as an intrusion in progress, something mechanistic and inevitable unless slowed. It’s also an argument aimed at anxious voters and skeptical colleagues: even if you think walls don’t stop people, surely you’ll accept that they slow people down. Delay becomes the minimal, defensible claim that still justifies maximal spending and maximal symbolism.
The subtext is about state control as performance. A fence is policy, but a wall is theater: a visible, photographable assertion that the government is doing something hard-edged. “Separations” broadens the point beyond concrete and steel into social sorting - who gets processed quickly, who gets detained, who gets turned into a deterrent. The language stays antiseptic, avoiding moral vocabulary (family, asylum, rights) in favor of logistics.
Contextually, this sits squarely in the post-9/11, intensifying-into-Trump era where border politics fused crime, terrorism, and demographic panic into one problem with one solution: build, block, separate. The genius - and the danger - is how “delay” lowers the bar for success while raising the stakes for everyone caught on the wrong side of the pause.
The tell is the pivot to “delay.” He’s not promising absolute security, only time. That’s a strategic concession dressed up as confidence. “Delay of entry” reframes migration as an intrusion in progress, something mechanistic and inevitable unless slowed. It’s also an argument aimed at anxious voters and skeptical colleagues: even if you think walls don’t stop people, surely you’ll accept that they slow people down. Delay becomes the minimal, defensible claim that still justifies maximal spending and maximal symbolism.
The subtext is about state control as performance. A fence is policy, but a wall is theater: a visible, photographable assertion that the government is doing something hard-edged. “Separations” broadens the point beyond concrete and steel into social sorting - who gets processed quickly, who gets detained, who gets turned into a deterrent. The language stays antiseptic, avoiding moral vocabulary (family, asylum, rights) in favor of logistics.
Contextually, this sits squarely in the post-9/11, intensifying-into-Trump era where border politics fused crime, terrorism, and demographic panic into one problem with one solution: build, block, separate. The genius - and the danger - is how “delay” lowers the bar for success while raising the stakes for everyone caught on the wrong side of the pause.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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