Hermetically Unsealed Borders
30th January 2024
Here is an interesting philosophical conundrum: what is the point of a border if it is specifically built to be breached?
Surely any pot that is intentionally full of holes is not a pot, but a colander. Likewise, though all walls should surely have at least a few doors in them, a wall made up of nothing but doors isn’t really a wall at all, but a turnstile.
Nowadays, it would increasingly seem as if the external defences of Western Europe and the United States are external defences in name only, purely performative barriers designed to allow anyone access who cares to seek it, no matter how unworthy, undesirable, or unassimilable. Catherine the Great’s Russia once had Potemkin Villages. In today’s West, we have Potemkin Borders.