Friday, January 27, 2023

Border Patrol

In this science fiction drama, the Canadians have turned sufficiently into an extension of District groupthink to be counted on to round up and return the "defectors" who try to draft dodge.  

In the meantime, those Mexican countries (wink) with their leftist governments, provide a haven south of the border for those wishing to avoid being sent to the front, as pawns for NATO.  

In that case, the border wall was a good investment.  It was always about keeping the prey hemmed in, in our game park.  We've been here before, in screenplays and dramas.

A sealed border is an affront to the freedom of movement for everyone, whereas most borders are semi-permeable -- meaning permeable.  Some of the right stuff, and right people, still gets through.  

Who are the right people with the right stuff?  That's up to the ones controlling customs.  

These read like grammatical truisms.  The fabled Hermetic Seal is more myth than physics, akin to a "perfect vacuum".  

Most membranes are at least permeable to light, meaning any electromagnetic frequency on the spectrum.

The question of citizenship or ships is not always a question of geographic locale.  You'll find citizens of country B inside country A and vice versa.  People mix it up like that, all the time.  

When an ideology puts people first, such complicated arrangements pose less of a threat.  From the viewpoint of the individual, it's rarely that complicated.  One cultivates one's loyalties as events unfold. Each step of the way makes sense, like a blockchain.

The idea that a person born anywhere on the planet has some inherent right of access to the whole planet, is not accepted even in principle as a part of the UN Declaration on Human Rights.  

The rights of citizenship, if one has citizenship, are not the same as access rights.  Thanks to private property rights, no one alive has unrestricted access in practice.  Even if "some inherent right" pertains, we see countervailing principles.  Then there's simply the inaccessibility of much of the planet.  No roads...

I'll be the first to admit I have no privileged access to most places.  Given my expired passport (I need to work on that), I'm pretty well penned in, but within a rather large area.  

What's oppressive is when the borders you must not cross keep you within a single campus or less.  Such arrangements are usually considered punitive, although if you're washed ashore at sea, on a deserted yet life supportive environment, then you may consider yourself lucky to be alive.  Hello Tom Hanks.

One hopes for at least an airport or dock, with appropriate boardable vessels coming and going.