by Garrisson Frost

Republicans last week pushed through the Senate a bill to build a 700-mile fence along the United States' border with Mexico to help stem illegal immigration into this country. President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law. And thus, one of the most intractable and complex problems facing this country – one that deeply effected everything from the economy to homeland security to our sense of national identity – was essentially turned into a construction problem, one that can be solved with a little over a $1 billion worth of wood, chain link and concrete.

For years, we've talked about how tearing down fences is the answer to our problems. Of course, we were always speaking metaphorically in those cases. And perhaps that was our mistake, maybe it was this ambiguity that kept us from finding real solutions to these problems that dragged on for years, decades. Metaphors about fences, apparently, can't solve the immigration crisis. Real fences, the kind that one has to climb over or dig under, apparently can.

Rather than continue to fight against the border fence, as many continue to do, perhaps it is time for us to embrace this approach to solving our national problems. If a fence can do away, once and for all, with a problem like immigration, perhaps it will work with other issues as well.

To help jumpstart this new approach, I would suggest that we consider building fences between:

Elected officials and Congressional pages

Developers and historically significant buildings

Elected officials and corporate lobbyists

Conservatives and the sacrament of marriage

Facts and opinions

American drivers and oil from the Middle East

Church and state

The Fox Network and the news

Government and a woman's reproductive organs

Ann Coulter and a word processor

The media and Paris Hilton

Republicans and Social Security

Polluting industries and the environment

Candidates and political consultants

The fast food industry and children

The tobacco industry and children

(Oct. 3, 2006)

© Copyright 1999-2006 The Aesthetic