Da Wall
So, I promised I’d talk about the wall, so let’s talk about the Wall. This essay will be divided into three parts. Why it’s racist and hateful, why it’s a bad idea regardless of all of that, and what better ways we could possibly spend the money Trump wants for the wall.
PART 1: WHY THE WALL IS RACIST AND HATEFUL
I feel like this is one of those things that, from the onset, should be obvious. If we’re so concerned about immigrants coming into the country, why is no one arguing for a border wall to be built on our northern border to keep these scummy Canadians out, what with their always saying “soh-rry” and gun control. No, we’re targeting the people from Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, whose homes have been destroyed and burned in part by our own hands. No one’s stopping red haired people on the street to ask them if they have their papers lest they be sent back to Ireland because they’re all drunkards and stinky (at least not anymore). No, we’re interested in keeping the Mexicans out, whose country has been ravaged by gangs and horrors.
So when people talk about keeping “immigrants” out of America, they’re not actually talking about immigrants. They’re talking about brown people. At this point, that should be common knowledge, but it somehow isn’t. That should be enough right there to prove point the first, but let’s throw one or two more things into the pot to prove the pattern.
If racial hatred isn’t the reason for this wall, then what might be? Safety? I mean sure, a giant, massive, border spanning wall would make an invasion difficult, but Mexico - or any of the South American countries - aren’t exactly interested in sending an army to attack us and take over.
No, they really aren’t. Despite what the president is saying, MS13 is not taking over American towns. They have members who live in those towns and operate within those towns, but they certainly can’t be shown to be “ruling” a town in any capacity. Prove me wrong. Name a city taken over by MS13. Further, MS13 is actually a transnational group that is both American and Mexican, but that’s a whole other story.
The point here is that there’s no real threat. We’ll talk more about this later, in the second section of this essay, but the people coming to America from the South are often people fleeing MS13 and trying to get away, and they do not make up the majority of illegal immigrants. They’re also not in any regard, illegal. They come seeking asylum, and there is nothing illegal about seeking asylum. These people have to go threw and incredibly long and obnoxious process designed to root out people who might be, say, MS13 members. That process itself is full of broken and stupid problems that I could write an entire essay on, but that’s besides the point. The point is that these people who are sneaking across the border aren’t sneaking in and getting caught by the guards, they are deliberately finding border patrol agents and surrendering themselves to them in the hopes of living a better life in America. These people are fleeing tragedy, they are not, as our President has called them, rapist and thieves. Why in the everloving hell would you want to come to America if you were a criminal, our police force is better (and also fucking hates you for your skin color half the time) and it’s just harder to get away with stuff here.
So what other reason could there be? Glory? Don’t we revere the Chinese for their mighty wall? Yes, but most of it has since crumbled, the project took 2000 years, and the process of working on it was so intense that it’s said people were buried in the foundations because there was no where else to put them. As you might imagine for a wall that took 2000 years to build, it was also built with different materials and was impossible to maintain, which is They why most of it no longer exists. The Great Wall of China was built to keep out barbarians - literal, honest to god sword swinging, shield bearing, head-severing, plague-body-catapult-launching barbarians. Our wall is being built to keep out the suffering and weary.
Besides, if “Glory” is really your interest, there are other, cooler things we could build beside a wall. A symbol of division and separation. What about building a new statue of liberty? Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. But no, you want a wall.
I’ve heard other reasons, but I think I’ve established that the wall isn’t for glory, or for security, or for anything else. The wall is to keep brown people out. A people who are looking for help. And amusingly, it’s not even going to work.
And you wanna know the funny thing? Not even the Great Wall worked to keep those barbarians out. Which brings us rather nicely to Part 2.
PART 2: WHY THE WALL IS A BAD IDEA REGARDLESS
So, there’s no reason to build the wall that isn’t “we don’t want them Mexicans comin’ into our country”, and I think I demonstrated that pretty clearly. But what if you still don’t believe me? Or what if you’re the sort of sick, disgusting sack of shit who’s freely willing to admit that you want to keep Mexicans out because they’re polluting your race or whatever nonsense. Well sadly, the wall isn’t going to work.
The big nail in that coffin here is that the majority of “Illegal Immigrants” are here not because they snuck past the border and got in, they came here legally and just overstayed their visas. They enjoyed the life they led here so much they wanted to stay in spite of the rules (and in spite of the racism), that should be something we’re proud of. Sure they’re breaking the laws, but we should be altering those laws. Maybe we give Visas for longer (for instance, no small number of these cases are students who overstay because they were unable to complete their course work in the time expected, usually because of a change in major) or maybe we have an easier pathway for people who have temporary visas to become permanent migrants.
Point is, sneaking through hidden in trucks isn’t actually how this is happening. These people are coming to America, legally seeking asylum or otherwise surrendering themselves in the hopes of finding a better life. They want to live here because they genuinely think it’s better. Then we started ripping their children away from them and leaving deep emotional scars that probably won’t go away for a long time, if at all.
But what if that doesn’t matter to you? You’re concerned about the drugs coming through the border. Well buddy, most drugs come through legal ports of entry, hidden in teddy bears or orifices no one wants to think about. Hell I’ve heard tell of a family stuffing their recently dead baby with drugs and pretending it was sleeping the whole time. They almost got away with it too. But those people were tourists who came in on planes, or occasionally boats, not on foot through the border crossing where they’re going to be stripped and inspected within an inch of their life.
But all of this ignores the simple fact that even if there were a large amount of people sneaking into the country, getting pass the border patrol agents with drugs and guns and taking over Texan and Californian towns, a wall isn’t going to stop them. How do we know? Because walls have already been built in certain places along the border, and it took the people who do sneak through about a month to dig a tunnel under the wall that took the government years to actually locate.
It doesn’t help that ne’er-do-wells could buy a ladder for a couple hundred dollars that can scale the wall, depending on how tall the stupid thing is (I found a few 35 foot ladders for about $300-$400 dollars) and a pair of wire cutters that can cut through barbed wire for 13, 14 dollars and another 12 dollars for for the rope to get down. Each of these could also be reused as often as necessary, with the rope needing the most replacement. This wouldn’t exactly be a stealthy way of doing the project, but the fact that it’s not that hard and pretty much within anyone’s capacity to do and think of should be proof enough that this is a really stupid idea. The wall will not deter immigrants. It will inconvenience them at most. If stripping them of their children didn’t stop them coming this way won’t either.
So the wall won’t accomplish the task it’s touted for, and even if it did, it’s an easily surmounted problem. But the wall is also actually a huge problem in a lot of ways you wouldn’t expect. A lot of little caveats pop up as you try and build this stupid thing, so let’s go over a few of them.
The first is acquiring the land for this undertaking. As it turns out people actually own that land who aren’t the United States. After all, there’s almost 2,000 miles to cover! We know this because border fencing already exists along some 600 miles of it, sporadically placed, and some of that land was taken from good, wholesome Texan farmers. One such family tells the story of how they used that land for pasture and crop growing. They couldn’t well move because of the complexity of their operation, and the difficulty of moving an entire farming operation as big as they had, so the government seized their land anyway through eminent domain, and effectively left them almost homeless and without their livelihood.
I don’t know how much land along the border isn’t owned by the United States. But given how much of a problem this was for just that quarter section of it, I doubt it won’t be a problem. The government just taking people’s lands because they want to is not a precedent we want to set under any circumstances, especially if those circumstances are racism.
But let’s pretend that isn’t a problem.
Let’s say you’re the sort that doesn’t mind private citizens losing their property for The Greater Good™, consider that that isn’t the only issue. There’s the matter of treaties. Some of that land happens to be on Native American reservations, so taking it for this...well, let’s say they tend not to be too happy about that. Especially since the last time more than one of their grave sites was busted up. But then there’s also the Rio Grande, which stretches for 350 miles between Texas and Mexico, and is protected by various treaties, one of which says that you can’t build anything that would disrupt it’s flow.
But let’s pretend that isn’t a problem either.
The next issue is getting the material to the actual construction site. As it turns out, concrete and steel don’t get up and walk on their own and build themselves, they have to be carted to the site. This will, needles to say, be difficult. Roads will have to be built along the wall so that these materials can be transported, or specialized trucks will have to be used. Either way, that’s more money for the wall then just the wall. Lots of little things like this show up. There are forests in the way, those have to be cut down. What about property the government doesn’t seize? Is it alright to sandwich that between the border wall and the actual border? It’s happened before! So we already have all this extra nonsense in addition to the nonsense of the wall itself.
But let’s pretend that this, too, is somehow magically not a problem.
There’s also environmental concerns. I mentioned before the Rio Grande is a problem because of treaties around it, but that treaty exists for a reason. Blocking the river will cause huge problems because you’re damming it up! Suddenly everything on the other side of the wall doesn’t have that water, and I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s a problem. Habitat is being destroyed, either cause serious problems or else it will be a weak spot in the wall, and I’m not sure how he plans to build the whole thing without crossing it at some point without building more stupid wall all the way up to Colo-freakin’-rado! There’s also all the natural habitat of animals that’s going to be disrupted by a massive stupid wall. Not saying that there will be ecological collapse, but we already have a species or two there on the Endangered Species list.
But let’s pretend that this is also not a problem.
Each of these little problems ratchetts the price of Da Wall up. Clearing pathways, building roads, carrying the concrete and steel to the site, buying the land from people (or the money required to steal it away), all of these add more money, and that’s if money is your primary concern. The environment, the livelihoods of innocent people, the treaties we break, and the changes all caused by this stupid thing. So if your only concern is money - your own money - then the wall is still a bad idea because it will cost you, the American Taxpayer, a shitton of money.
The Trumby wanted 5.7 billion for it, but actual estimates by people who actually build this sort of stuff think that the actual wall will take closer to 12 billion. You will be paying for that, not Mexico - the shutdown was proof enough of that. So can we all agree the wall is a really stupid idea? Please? Let’s think about some better things we could do with just that 5.7 Billion he demanded in the shutdown.
PART 3: BETTER WAYS TO SPEND THE MONEY
So what are some better ways we could spend 5.7 billion dollars. Well, first, with that money, we could replace the pipes in Flint Michigan - 100 times over. So what else can we add on top of that. You could do what I suggested when I first wrote an anti-wall post under another name, and you could give everyone in America a 10 dollar cake, (with 5 dollars for shipping). You’d still have 651 million leftover tool! Subtract the 55 million from that to fix flint and you still have 596 million dollars left over. Hm, what else can we do. We could then spend about 400 million to recreate about 40 Neanderthals - a reproductively viable population - and have another human species around. Not only would we learn some cool stuff, I’d personally love to have a Neandtheral friend. That leaves us with 196 million to work with. I’m tired of doing math at this point, but I think you could start an 8 acre solar farm with that money in the Mojave or something. And finally we could spend another 55 million dollars on a private island just for me because I DESERVE SOMETHING NICE DAMN IT.
We could also go back to the Moon, that’d not only be a glorious endeavor but one that would actually further science. Heaven forbid our country do that, though. I looked around and the estimates I saw when I researched the number said we could travel back and forth from the moon for 700,000,000 the first time, and then fly there and back again TEN MORE TIMES.
And that’s with the low figure. I computed that you could buy every homeless person in America a house, buy each state in the Union its own private jet for public use, and still have more than enough to BUY EVERYONE ON THE EARTH A COPY OF OCTODAD: DADLIEST CATCH.
You want me to go on? Because I totally can, I’m enjoying the hell out of this. What are some ideas you have that we could better spend 5.7 BILLION on.