💬 Dave Pell | NextDraft:
It started as cheap (but clearly effective) marketing line used to stir up mouth-breathing xenophobes at packed rallies. It evolved into an imaginary threat buoyed by invented stats and outright lies. It was brought back from the dead by extremist blowhards screaming from talk radio’s fringe. It revealed the limits of the self-touted negotiating skills of a fictional businessman and bankruptcy king. It led to a shutdown that is causing direct harm to apolitical government employees who have already suffered through two years of embarrassment, chaos, and verbal attacks. And now it has taken us to the precipice of an American president declaring a state of emergency (which doesn’t exist) to fund a wall (which wouldn’t protect us even if it did). So maybe it makes perfect sense that the unreality associated with this wall is the hill on which Donald Trump is making his grand political stand.