Speaker 1: Pushkin. President's priorities have moved forward, including construction work on
Speaker 1: new barriers that are border with Mexico in a world
Speaker 1: gone haywire, and sometimes art is the only thing that
Speaker 1: can make sense of it all. Construction has not slowed
Speaker 1: during the coronavirus pandemic. This is the Chronicles of Now,
Speaker 1: where we ask writers to dream up short stories inspired
Speaker 1: by the news. I'm Ashley Ford. Since the end of February,
Speaker 1: some fifty miles of barriers has been built when most
Speaker 1: of the country is shut down for the pandemic. Work
Speaker 1: when the border barrier actually accelerated. In June, Trump visited
Speaker 1: a section of the wall in Yuma, Arizona. Is the
Speaker 1: most powerful and comprehensive border wall structure anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: It's got technology that but he would even believe. Trump
Speaker 1: has promised more than five hundred miles of border wall
Speaker 1: by early next year, but the reality only about the
Speaker 1: three miles of new barrier where none previously existed have
Speaker 1: been built by the Trump administration so far. The things
Speaker 1: that Trump was imagining about what the wall should look
Speaker 1: like and what features it should have were just so bad,
Speaker 1: shit crazy. That's John Ray, the author of five novels,
Speaker 1: and he's talking about news reports of Trump's most outlandish
Speaker 1: ideas for the wall. It was kind of like he
Speaker 1: was already in the realm of science fiction before the
Speaker 1: first dollar was spent on this project. Whatever we think
Speaker 1: of Trump's wall, it's going to be around for years
Speaker 1: to come. If Trump wins the election, it may even
Speaker 1: get fully built. For this story, John Ray tries to
Speaker 1: answer the question what will the wall be like in
Speaker 1: thirty or forty years? The barrier doesn't think in terms
Speaker 1: of years, not in any conventional sense, but sufficient weather
Speaker 1: systems have traveled its length, doing their utmost to compromise
Speaker 1: its integrity that the barrier is conscious on a structural
Speaker 1: elemental level of having passed its prime. Evidence abounds the
Speaker 1: barrier steel and zinc alloy ballards, once so gracefully crenelated
Speaker 1: so subtly iridescent in the blazing midday sun, are pock
Speaker 1: marked and rust streaked and crumpled. Its angled concrete fundament,
Speaker 1: made due to budgetary and environmental concerns from locally quarried
Speaker 1: trap rock, is fractured and eroded, and its six inch
Speaker 1: electrified spikes have lost both their grace and their alternating current,
Speaker 1: to say nothing of their effectiveness at puncturing human flesh. Migrants,
Speaker 1: military personnel, traders, smugglers, small children, and beasts transgress the
Speaker 1: barrier with impunity at certain key junctures. Margallis, Sonoyta, virtually
Speaker 1: the entire state of Texas, there is no longer any
Speaker 1: barrier to speak of. One year ago, a bespectacled young man,
Speaker 1: apparently some kind of student, approached the barrier without the
Speaker 1: least sign of fear or trepidation, just outside develop Paso
Speaker 1: and edge the following verses into its rust encrusted pediment
Speaker 1: with a Swiss army knife. My name is Ozamandius, King
Speaker 1: of Kings. Look on my works, e mighty and despair.
Speaker 1: That was a low point, no question about it, a
Speaker 1: fresh humiliation to add to all the others. But in
Speaker 1: spite of such cruelties, in spite of humanity's glaringly obvious
Speaker 1: indifference to its plight, the barrier refuses to give in
Speaker 1: to despair. When things are at their worst, when morale
Speaker 1: is at its lowest, it has only to consider the trench.
Speaker 1: The trench, by any standard, is a thing of savage beauty.
Speaker 1: The years have wrought changes upon it as well, perhaps
Speaker 1: to a greater degree than on any of the barrier's
Speaker 1: other feature. But these changes have themselves been things of wonder,
Speaker 1: contrary to what the naysayers and the skeptics not to
Speaker 1: mention the Army Corps of Engineers argued when the trench
Speaker 1: was first proposed, It has not lost its water to evaporation,
Speaker 1: nor has its channel become clogged with falling rock or
Speaker 1: displaced earth. Not even the most passionate of the pro
Speaker 1: barrier advocates have thus far managed to explain this, in
Speaker 1: defiance of all reason of all since the trench indoors,
Speaker 1: and that is by no means all of the seven
Speaker 1: hundred sixty breeding pairs of American alligators imported at considerable
Speaker 1: public expense from Lake Okeechobee in twenty twenty seven, hundred
Speaker 1: fifty eight died of hunger within the first month. The
Speaker 1: remaining two pairs, however, have gone on to populate an
Speaker 1: astonishingly extensive expanse of the brackish, oily, oxygen starred canal
Speaker 1: system with their scaly progeny. Though contact with the human population,
Speaker 1: as admittedly dwindled over the years, dwindled in fact to
Speaker 1: the point that the barrier sometimes questions its own raison dtre.
Speaker 1: The alligators have more than made up for the absence
Speaker 1: of people. The alligators have given the barrier an altogether
Speaker 1: more beautiful, more reasonable, or justifiable purpose. In a word,
Speaker 1: they give the barrier a reason to exist. If only
Speaker 1: the same thing could be said about the snakes. That
Speaker 1: was status report by John Ray. The narrator was Eduardo Ballerini. Hi. John, Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm good. So when you read the news late last
Speaker 1: year that Trump had privately talked about fortifying a border
Speaker 1: with a water filled trench stocked with snakes or alligators,
Speaker 1: which prompted AIDS to seek a cost estimate, where did
Speaker 1: your mind go and know that that was what was
Speaker 1: happening in your reality? You know, the frustrating thing a
Speaker 1: lot of the times with fiction, as you think, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is such an amazing story, but you
Speaker 1: have that reaction that a lot of fiction writers have,
Speaker 1: which is like, I could never put that in a novel.
Speaker 1: I could never put that in a story because everybody
Speaker 1: would be like, come on, please, you know, But in
Speaker 1: this case, it's like you can write fiction that actually
Speaker 1: has that cool aspect of nonfiction, which is no stupid
Speaker 1: and crazy as this seems. Check the article in the Times.
Speaker 1: You know, so, all I had to do is basically
Speaker 1: take the given facts of the story and just extended
Speaker 1: by another thirty six years or however many years that
Speaker 1: was the story. Who So, construction on the real border
Speaker 1: barrier has continued even during the pandemic. Yeah, what do
Speaker 1: you think the wall means to Trump? But also to America? Basically,
Speaker 1: for Trump after he makes a very public declaration, the
Speaker 1: vast majority of these declarations, he's never called out on
Speaker 1: the wall though, was so central to his campaign and
Speaker 1: was kind of like one of his first big symbols.
Speaker 1: He can't just totally bail on it. And it's an
Speaker 1: ongoing project that, of course, in theory, would take many,
Speaker 1: many years to complete. So I think it's become a
Speaker 1: kind of private nightmare for him. It was never financially feasible.
Speaker 1: It was certainly never going to actually do what it
Speaker 1: was supposed to do. You've lived most of your life
Speaker 1: in the US, but now you're chatting from Mexico City.
Speaker 1: That's right where you've been living on and off for
Speaker 1: the past couple of years. How has living on the
Speaker 1: other side of the border changed your view of the wall.
Speaker 1: No one talks about the wall in Mexico. No one
Speaker 1: takes it seriously. It's just not one of the topics
Speaker 1: that people debate very fiercely, even when they're debating US
Speaker 1: Mexican relations. What is very much on the radar, though,
Speaker 1: is the relationship between the Mexican president, the current Mexican government,
Speaker 1: and Trump. And the enormous resources that Trump is insisting
Speaker 1: on the Mexican government diverting towards the border to keep
Speaker 1: migrants from crossing. The wall is kind of completely redundant.
Speaker 1: It's just completely beside the point. But in many other ways,
Speaker 1: Trump really is successfully bullying the Mexican government into doing
Speaker 1: his bidding as far as immigration is concerned. It's a bummer.
Speaker 1: Do the people who you speak to their think he'll
Speaker 1: be reelected. I think the people that I've spoken to
Speaker 1: here sadly have less optimism about the coming election than
Speaker 1: most Americans I've spoken to, and I would say less
Speaker 1: optimism than I do. They've been through so many disappointments
Speaker 1: that they really just don't expect very much of us. Ashley.
Speaker 1: You know, the occasional glimmer of rational thought and maybe
Speaker 1: voting in our best interests. I mean, that's enough to
Speaker 1: surprise them. They would be delighted if Trump got voted out.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting also is that they don't necessarily see
Speaker 1: Trumps as the sum total of the problem. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's been bias against Mexico and misinformation about immigration since
Speaker 1: well before Trump got a lot. Absolutely, the sad truth
Speaker 1: is that Obama is pretty harsh with his deportations as well,
Speaker 1: and phil Obama never mind about you know, the Bush administration.
Speaker 1: So they would be delighted to see Trump go, but
Speaker 1: they wouldn't expect everything to just be be lovely and
Speaker 1: equitable overnight, and neither should we know, John Ray, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on Chronicles of Now, Ashley.
Speaker 1: It was a delight thanks for having me. You can
Speaker 1: read my full interview with John Ray on our website
Speaker 1: Chronicles dot Fm, where you can also read the story
Speaker 1: you just heard and other short fiction torn from today's headlines.
Speaker 1: Our sound designer and composer is Bart Warshaw, our producer
Speaker 1: is Curtis Fox, and our associate producer is Emily Rostick.
Speaker 1: Tyler Cabot is the executive producer and founder of Chronicles
Speaker 1: of Now. For Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer is Letal Malad.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Carly Migliori, Heather Fame, and
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler for the Chronicles of Now podcast. I'm Ashley Ford.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. So we need to get this out
Speaker 1: of the way. Several years ago, I spent a few
Speaker 1: weeks living in your basement as I was covering from
Speaker 1: a torn acl wait wait wait, wait, wait, stop, turn
Speaker 1: off the mic. I remember that I don't think I
Speaker 1: was home. I wasn't. I wasn't at my house at
Speaker 1: the time, but I remember, I remember this, this scenario