The Billionaires and Algorithms Win. Now the Fight over Truth Begins.

Last December, I stood at the border wall in Arizona, near the Lukeville port of entry, and watched a Fox News cameraman in action. As I described it in my post, “The Lucrative Business of Border Chaos,” I listened to the steady patter of outrage coming from the Fox News anchors, through a live feed on his cell phone mounted on his camera. “Bodies,” “raise the fear … the credible fear threshold,” and “Haitians of concern.”

Having been in media half my life, with a five-year stint in Texas politics, I understood that these words and the fear-based framing were intentional. They would be beamed throughout America to keep people angry, fearful, and glued to their television sets as people continue to turn away in droves from the old legacy medium. They would also help Donald Trump win back the White House.

Before the cameraman took his live shot from the border wall, we had exchanged pleasantries. A weary trail of women, men, and children walked along the wall, searching for a Border Patrol agent so that they could request asylum. They were exhausted, and in a simple act of humanity, the Fox cameraman and I pointed the way toward a tent structure that held water and food, which had been erected by humanitarian groups, where they could wait for the Border Patrol agents.

On the Mexican side of the wall, a family sold coffee and sandwiches, and a skinny puppy darted back and forth between the gaps in the bollards of the border wall, from Mexico to the U.S. and back again, looking for scraps.

The Fox cameraman and I were standing at the border wall, surrounded by asylum seekers, and we were not scared. But with the right editing and words, the people watching his news feed in their homes in Iowa, Wisconsin, or Kansas would be filled with anxiety and told that we were under invasion.

But it almost seems quaint now to write about television, as it continues to lose viewers, as all legacy media—newspapers and radio—have done. We now live in the fragmented states of America, where different realities, curated by algorithms, and manipulated by billionaires, are pumped through different social media platforms to dominate our thoughts and impulses. As someone who has reported on the U.S.-Mexico border since the late 1990s, I have felt this shift in a profound way. It has polarized people’s thinking, spurred more extreme, corrosive political speech, and elevated lies over reality. It is increasingly robbing us of our empathy and of human connection, when we need it the most, as we come out of the anxiety-filled and isolating pandemic years. And now, worst of all, it has brought our democracy to the brink of destruction.

There is a vast right-wing network of influencers, content creators, and grifters who make money from “border chaos” and from amplifying fear and hatred toward immigrants and others. It serves the billionaires and authoritarian leaders like Trump—who are always searching for an imagined enemy—and it will be used and expanded in the next four years to make sure that Trump, Vance, and other authoritarians can consolidate their power.

Having reported from the border during the first Trump administration, we witnessed the brutality of family separation, the tent camps, and active military deployed to border communities; the surveillance and persecution of border humanitarian workers and journalists; and the destruction of the environment as mountains were dynamited to make way for a wall that doesn’t work. This time, with Trump and his allies believing that they have a mandate from the American people, it will be much worse.

There will be endless volatility and “border chaos.” The next four years will make Trump, Elon Musk, and other oligarchs even richer. And it will make the rest of us a lot poorer. It will accelerate climate change, and it will not stop people from migrating or arriving at our southern border.

There is nothing we can do now but expose the lies and hold elected officials accountable for their actions, as we champion human rights and free speech, and report on the reality at the border, as we experience it. In the face of the coming chaos, we rely on our neighbors and our beautiful and resilient border communities that have met every challenge at the border with dignity, compassion, and human decency.