Tag: Trump’s wall

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Opinion The Last Word

Fenced In

CREDIT: Mati Parts | Dreamstime.com

Donald Trump’s flight to the border — six days after the Capitol insurrection — focused the nation on the foundational lie (and enduring failure) of his administration: the border wall. While extolling the virtues of the mostly imaginary wall in south Texas, an actual wall, or fence, was under emergency construction in Washington, D.C., to protect the nation’s capital from the president and his insurrectionists.

Some segments of Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” went up during his administration — maybe as much as 450 miles. He had promised to build 2,000 miles of wall and told us that Mexico would pay for it. He convinced many in his party that immigrants from the global south were terrorists, yet we found out, sadly, that the terrorists are from right here in the USA. He challenged his party to re-script the entire history of the United States: Trump’s USA was a dark, dystopian place where immigrants were dangerous criminals. Protecting America meant denouncing immigrants and separating ourselves from them both physically and psychologically.

Mati Parts | Dreamstime.com

Trump’s unfinished border wall was built on a lie, and stands as a monument to a cruel and divisive moment in U.S. history.

Trump, during his four-year rule, wrecked the asylum laws — laws and norms through which people with a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their home nations could seek asylum in the USA. But Trump forced an agreement with Mexico whereby, essentially, Central American asylum seekers to the USA now must “wait” in Mexico before being offered a hearing with a U.S. judge. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, all such court appearances have been canceled — stranding thousands of Central Americans in Mexico. That country, reeling from political and social violence, economic decline, and COVID-19, is not necessarily a hospitable place for Central American asylum seekers. There was a time when the USA was universally admired for its asylum laws and policies: Our current “Wait in Mexico Indefinitely” asylum policy is hardly helping our sinking standing on the world stage.

We educators, after virtually every crisis, call for “more” education. Looking at and listening to that angry mob on January 6th made me wonder what we’ve done wrong in the education community. Something we must do, immediately? Stop teaching patriotism and start teaching truth. My students — good kids at Rhodes College here in Midtown — are generally amazed to learn about the role of the USA in toppling legitimate governments in Latin America: The list is long, and U.S. actions in Brazil and Chile helped usher in cruel, violent military dictatorships in those places, in 1964 and 1973 respectfully.

Many newscasters on January 6th, so astounded at what was occurring in real time, went to the “banana republic” comparison. They didn’t name specific nations, but they were probably thinking about Guatemala. Guatemala is Guatemala because we helped make it that way. We pushed forward the overthrow of a legitimate, democratically elected government there in 1954, and the nation has never quite been the same. Our political and military leadership was involved, including President Dwight Eisenhower. So too were religious figures such as Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York. Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Honduras (some of the other “B” Republics) have all suffered under the influence of the USA.

Teaching “American exceptionalism” is another part of the problem: Like every powerful nation or society of the past, other more powerful nations will eclipse us, and we ought to have a clear, sound, historically truthful understanding of how (and why) this happens. It happens for many reasons, but a unifying characteristic of every great society’s stall involves leadership that becomes disconnected from reality. Think of France in the late 18th century or Russia in the early 20th century. Think of Trump now.

I suspect we’ll survive the current crisis, wholly manufactured in the USA. Politicians should tell the truth all the time, but they don’t. Educators must tell the truth always because what happened on January 6th suggests an existential failure, and we’ve all rushed in to blame the … Capitol Police. And of course President Trump. But we’re all to blame. The horror show of the Capitol riot represents a failure of our education system, a failure to understand who we are as a society, and a basic failure of imagination. And a failure to speak clear truth to power. It all started with an absurd lie about a wall that never got built — a wall that now surrounds our capital city and just might encroach and suffocate our nation, unless we help take it down. With the truth.

Michael J. LaRosa is a professor at Rhodes College.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

No Crisis! You’re the Crisis!

CREDIT: REUTERS | Earnie Grafton

When the orange terror — I mean President Donald Trump — said he was going to build a wall at the southern border, I thought it was a joke. It’s expensive, it’s anti-immigrant, and seems regressively un-American. Not only was it not a joke, but, as of press time, the orange terror is seemingly willing to allow the federal government to be partially shut down indefinitely, halting federal services, hurting people’s pocketbooks, and causing a slew of other disruptions, in order to force the issue of the border wall.

People’s livelihoods are being played with, like this is one big game of Monopoly, all for what the president calls the “crisis” at the southern border.

Merriam-Webster defines a crisis as a “situation that has reached a critical phase” or an “unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending, especially one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome.”

REUTERS | Earnie Grafton

The southern border

There is no real crisis at the border. There are crises, however, in our schools, in the health-care system, in the criminal justice system, and elsewhere in this country. And the billions of dollars Trump wants to spend on border security could make a huge dent in those areas. But, that’s a discussion for another day.

The most current crisis is the 800,000 federal employees who are not getting paid. Why should they be punished? Let’s talk about the rent they won’t be able to pay, or the car note, or the groceries they won’t be able to afford for their families. What about the mothers and babies who could stop getting WIC benefits and therefore not have the things they need to survive, the kids whose school lunches will stop being provided, or the immigrants whose court dates have been rescheduled for a time in the unforeseeable future?

The FDA isn’t regulating or inspecting food and drugs, FBI agents are working without pay, food stamps will stop being dispersed at the end of February, national parks are turning into waste zones, and airports are closing entire terminals due to a limited number of TSA agents. And this isn’t even an exhaustive list of all the other chaos the shutdown has caused.

This is the real crisis, which could have, and should have been, avoided.

Trump’s behavior mirrors that of a prepubescent child who throws tantrums when they don’t get their way. That’s all this government shutdown is: one big temper tantrum. When you are a 12-year-old girl, it’s fine and even expected. But, when you’re the leader of the free world and are responsible for the well-being of an entire nation, you need to do better.

Trump seems to have no regard for the millions of people his hissy fit is affecting. That’s a slap in the face to the people who chose jobs, in some cases for an unglamourous amount of pay, who serve the country — and those of us who depend on their service. You can’t just shut down the government of the world’s most prominent country because you didn’t get what you wanted.

The United States looks like such a joke to other countries around the world right now. I mean, I lost some faith in our country the day it elected the orange terror. But now? Trump’s warranted a whole new level of disrespect.

Though it’s unlikely Trump will ever be able to redeem himself from the absolute joke of a president he’s become, he still has the time and opportunity to offset some of the havoc he’s wreaked. If he does, maybe some day the history books can at least say one nice thing about him.

If he backs down now, it would show the world that he has at least an ounce of sense and reasonableness — not much, but some. But, I doubt that’s coming. He’s still talking about declaring an emergency to build the wall. He’s going to have a real emergency on his hands if this continues. What happens when TSA agents can’t survive working like unpaid worker bees anymore? Or when FBI agents decide to stop working for free?

And would a wall even solve the immigration “crisis?” Not unless it’s coupled with updated, strong, fair legislation. A wall won’t fix this country’s problematic immigration system. Good leadership will.

At the end of the day, the United States is a country of immigrants built by immigrants. Those who came here 200 years ago to seek a better life have little room to criticize those who are coming in 2019 for the same reason.

The government shutdown is just another reminder that we are all living in a wonky Twilight Zone, a nightmare episode that, hopefully, we’ll soon wake up from.

Maya Smith is a Flyer staff writer.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Wonder Wall

CREDIT: Vaclav Lang | Dreamstime.com

Humans start lying at about age two. I caught my otherwise angelic niece in the most minor fib — about whether she’d been to the potty. What struck me wasn’t the ease with which she lied right to my face, but how quickly she realized her mendacity would catch up to her. It’s as if I could see the gears turning in her head as she weighed her options. Take the praise and continue the lie, only to later be exposed as full of crap, both literally and figuratively? Or tell the truth and avoid whatever potential messes await? She looked at me, she looked at her mom, and she blurted: “I’M JUST KIDDING! HA HA HA.”

If only our nation’s president could be so reasoned and mature. Imagine being so committed to an idea that you’re willing to shut down the federal government over it. Now imagine it’s an idea that everyone has told you is simplistic, impractical, and ineffectual. Listen, hear me out — it’s a wall. But not just any wall. A big beautiful $20 billion dollar wall for keeping the brown people out. Mr. Deal Man never expected Democrats to say “Sure, we’ll do your wall, whatever” just to watch him and his band of nationalists and neophytes blow it again. Get your big beautiful wall, but get owned by libs in the process? Talk about a catch-22.

Vaclav Lang | Dreamstime.com

The Wall

For a few years now, I have wondered how no one has sufficiently explained to Mr. Trump that planes can fly over walls, even 55-foot-tall ones. One would think someone who owned an airline would have considered that. Overstays, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, have outnumbered border crossers every year for the past decade. These are people who come here legally and allow their visas to expire, for whatever reason. Maybe war broke out or a natural disaster happened back home. Maybe they like the food better. A wall isn’t going to keep them out. Most unauthorized immigrants have been here more than a decade, and a third of them didn’t come from Mexico. The number of apprehensions at the border between the U.S. and Mexico dropped by about half last year, with virtually no changes in enforcement. Maybe people are “flooding in” from elsewhere. Maybe they’re flying. Maybe they don’t want to live in a shithole where that guy is in charge.

To hear the president tell it, the border is like Texarkana, where you can just hopscotch between countries. “Tee hee! I’m in Mexico! Tee hee! Now I’m in Arizona!” And drugs are imported by a guy throwing a bag of drugs to his buddy on the other side. If it were that easy, it wouldn’t be called smuggling. In reality, most illegal drugs arrive by vehicles, with the product hidden in creative ways. Some drugs arrive disguised as cargo. Maybe your cheap Mexican produce made its journey alongside some hollowed-out watermelons full of heroin. Again, nothing a wall could contain.

He knows these things. He could have ended the charade on day one by saying “Folks, the wall is a metaphor.” But the lie has consumed him and there’s no turning back. Chief of staff John Kelly gave his boss the perfect out, saying Trump’s views on the wall had evolved since he was a candidate. He could have said (tweeted, probably) “General Kelly is right. As president, I have more information at my disposal. Coming from a more knowledgeable place, I’ve concluded a wall is a bad investment. I know this will disappoint some people, but I took an oath to lead the entire country, and I hope you’ll understand that I feel this is in our best interest.”

He could have instead pledged to address the opioid crisis in a meaningful way beyond declaring an emergency — a move that would actually help the white rural voters I keep reading about in The New York Times. He carried four out of the five states with the highest rates of opioid-related deaths — and lost by less than half a percentage point in the fifth. Addressing the root cause would stem demand for those backpacks full of heroin that allegedly keep hitting people over the head.

But that’s not what any of this is about, which makes last weekend’s shutdown so much more enraging than the previous. Holding children’s health care and DREAMers’ futures hostage in exchange for hardline and heartless immigration policy isn’t about priorities or responsible spending or even keeping the country safe. It’s catnip for the GOP’s new base of white-grievance rage-aholics, who are the only ones troubled by the presence of immigrants in this once-welcoming nation.

There were so many ways to compromise without looking like a weak loser who sucks at deals, but now the party that controls both houses of Congress and the presidency is so committed to half-baked soundbyte strategies they can’t even keep the government from shutting down. What a time.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing specialist and an unapologetic Memphian.

Categories
Opinion The BruceV Blog

How Smugglers Will Circumvent Trump’s Wall

Catapults, drones, submarines, ultralight planes, tunnels. What do all these things have in common? They’re all ways that Mexican cartels use to smuggle drugs into the United States. In this story on Vice.com, author Mike Pearl interviews Sanho Tree of the Drug Policy Project to get his perspective on what President Trump’s proposed border wall can — and cannot — do to halt drug trafficking.