Open Season

“The only thing we are not doing is, we are not shooting people who cross the border because of course the Biden administration will charge us with murder.”

Gov. Abbott: Texas hasn't shot migrants on the border because Biden will 'charge us with murder'

I have to admit that I find Governor Abbott's formulation of that statement to be strange. Surely there are other authorities who would frown upon gunning down migrants as they attempted to cross the U.S./Mexico border, legally or otherwise. Especially in light of the "clarification" the Governor made later.

[A]t a press conference Friday morning, Abbott told reporters his remarks were made after he "was asked to point out where the line is drawn about what would be illegal, and I pointed out something that is obviously illegal."

One would suspect that more than the Biden Administration's Department of Justice would have a problem with open murder.

But I get it. This is about partisan signalling. "Securing" (or perhaps "sealing" would be a better term) the border with Mexico has become something of a cause for Republican voters, who resent the perceived damage that low-wage workers from Central and South America do to their wages. Less top-of-mind for them is the fact that companies being able to underpay (if not simple steal wages from) migrant workers helps keep prices low. There is a certain mindset in the United States that is too self-important to accept wages that would allow for the prices they are willing to pay for goods and services, and too price sensitive to pay the prices that would support the wages they would want for the work. And of course, the shareholders of the businesses that commonly employ migrant labor aren't about to reduce their own dividends to employ Americans without raising prices. Note that this doesn't mean that the common refrain of "Americans don't want to do this work," is true. I think that plenty of Americans are willing to do the work... just not for the poverty wages offered. (Besides, it's not like the migrants think the work is great, either. The fact that so many of them want their children to receive good educations so they can do something better demonstrates that. But the work is relatively better, and often much safer, than what can be had in whatever part of Latin America they've left. Americans complain about crime, but they'd like desert whole cities if faced with the sort of crime that drives people to move thousands of miles to escape it.

But I digress. In any event, this particular flavor of partisan signalling strikes me as strange. I understand that there is a constituency for the idea that making the border into a (reasonably) impermeable barrier through a combination of wall-building and firepower. I don't know how they think that this would work, given how long the border is (and the fact that no-one else has ever managed to seal such a large expanse of territory), but I recognize they think it can be done. And I can see that Governor Abbott would want to signal to such people that he has their backs. What I'm dubious about is the idea that he couldn't manage to find messaging that didn't project an image of "bloodthirsty manic kept in check by the political opposition. But, of course, I'm working under the idea that they'd rather not look like "bloodthirsty maniacs." I could very well be that I'm mistaken in that. At least in the sense that Governor Abbott's constituency in this may want to portray themselves precisely as Blue America perceives them. After all, being thought of as dangerously violent can have its advantages.

And maybe it's this desire on the part of partisans, to deliberately stoke the anxieties of those they disagree with, that's pushing partisan messaging into more extreme territory. Some extremes, it seems, being more extreme than others.