Trump wants to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the border. What will it prevent? Largely nothing, and it is just symbolic of his hardline supporters’ insecurities and disdain for people who do not look like them. It is a loud, obscene objection to changing demographics, which in reality can perhaps be slowed, but not stopped. After all, Trump’s wall is futile because 40% of undocumented immigrants come by air and net immigration from Mexico is nearly zero at the moment. But such trivialities do not matter to Trump. What matters is his own towering ego! Trump wants to build a monument to himself so immense that it can only be contained by the 1,900-mile border separating the two countries. The Romans built Hadrian’s Wall in Britannia to keep out the barbarians. The Chinese built the Great Wall to keep out marauding barbarian nomads at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives of slave labor. Now we will have Trump’s wall, which will be erected to keep out peaceful migrants looking for a better life for their families.
As said, the wall is a monument to Trump’s ego and magnificence. It is largely a phallic symbol large enough to prove his physical prowess to the whole world. It is tantamount to giving the world his middle finger! Unlike social programs which have tedious details and entail compromise, the wall cannot be ignored because it stands there, a physical barrier between us and a much poorer nation to the south. Policy prescriptions come and go, but the wall will remain. After all, Trump has no interest in policy and no interest in learning the nuances of it. His representatives even said as much when offering John Kaisch the vice-presidency confiding that the governor of Ohio would be in charge of both foreign and domestic policy. When asked what then would Trump be in charge of the answer was “making America great again.” But great nations do not build defensive fortifications some 2,000 miles long which they can hide behind in comfort and smug safety. Great nations do not ludicrously insist that their poorer neighbors pay for such a ridiculously ineffective barrier, when its very existence is an affront to them. In fact, great nations to not elect an incurious imbecile like Donald Trump!
We know that the wall is a monument to Trump’s ego more than anything because when told that former President Vicente Fox of Mexico said that “Mexico is not going to pay” for Trump’s “effing wall,” Trump responded “the wall just got ten feet higher.” Trump must be indulging in some sort of Viagra for the political class because when his masculinity is threatened the wall seems to grow higher in response. Imagine the tens of billions wasted when the wall grows by ten feet or more each time Trump feels an affront from Mexican governmental officials. On his recent trip to Mexico, the sitting president of Mexico Enrique Pina Nieto tweeted that he told Trump in no uncertain terms that Mexico would not pay for the construction of such a wall. Well likely, the wall grew another ten feet in response just as the words left the Mexican president’s lips. Who knows? The wall could reach hundreds of feet in height given any perceived slight to Trump and may just resemble a modern Tower of Babel once constructed. (Trump would surely have to be informed of the allegory of the Tower of Babel because as Bobby Jindal quipped, Trump does not read the bible because he is not in it!)
We know Trump works up his adoring crowds into a lather when he savagely cries out that he is going to build the wall. In fact, it is how he begins most stump speeches when in front of a friendly audience. They chant in unison “build the wall” almost as if they were under the thralls of some ritualistic, primitive spell. Trump calls “And who will pay for it?” and the crowd dutifully, hypnotically responds “Mexico!” It is almost like some password uttered to enter a cult where Trump can do no wrong and there is no objective reality to tear one away from the idolization of Trump. Facts are what the Orange Menace says they are, even if Trump contradicts himself the very next moment. The mainstream press is vilified as partisan. Science itself is ignored and demonized and one exists in a sort of right-wing bubble of disinformation, lies, and false narratives. It is a world where Trump is not accountable for saying that Senator Ted Cruz’s father was in on the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy or that China created the “hoax” of climate change “to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” As long as Trump’s bullying and politics of grievance continue that is the only thing that counts and no intrusion of reality is permitted. The worshiping of Trump is the only reality!
Well, this disengagement from objective reality, this extremism, this race baiting is what the modern day Republican party has become. It is not even any longer the party of Reagan and light years away from being the party of Abraham Lincoln. It is almost difficult to entertain the idea that the Republican party was ever anything than a nihilistic party representing obstruction and extremism; a party that shuts down government over the funding of the Affordable Care Act or of Planned Parenthood. What are its values besides glorification of the rich, pandering to industry, and the obstruction of any sort of working, functional democracy? What has a political party become when it does its very best to disenfranchise voters and stamp out objective reality itself, vilifying the mainstream press at every turn? Facts are partisan to the GOP and the truth is relative and it makes one feel very sad! The GOP truly has become the party of Trump and, if elected, the U.S. will be a laughing stock when the world is not cowering in fear at his very unpredictability, his pettiness.