I called DJT's wall expensive, ineffective, and stupid. You asked me to elaborate on the ineffective and stupid. Okay, here.
1: Ineffective. I think he originally wanted a concrete wall, the entire length of the US-Mexico border. That would actually work better than the steel crap he's been talking about recently, but the point is that walls don't keep everyone out.
The single mothers fleeing abusive husbands or the teenagers trying to evade arrest for whatever stupid shit they get up to, fine, a wall will work. The "Bad Hombres" DJT uses to justify the whole need for a wall, no.
The cartels have access to planes, boats, boring drills, and --if they really just want a hole in the fence-- good ol wire cutters, cutting torches, jackhammers, dynamite, etc.
So to recap: augmenting the existing barriers may slightly reduce undocumented immigration by harmless folks who have no other way into the US, but will not dent the criminal traffic. A wall will not do what DJT claims he wants to do.
2: Stupid. Even if a wall could be designed in such a way that it would maximize the security of our border --some kind of gargantuan funky Astrodome-- it's a stupid thing to do.
The Latino population of the US --citizens just as legit as you are-- are justifiably offended by it, because building a wall isn't really about securing the border. If you think it is, you're guzzling that kool aid and you should stop before you piss all over yourself.
Borders are not secured by walls anymore; it's been centuries since a wall has kept a determined invader off somebody else's lawn. Even the Berlin Wall didn't really keep westerners from going into eastern Europe; it slowed defections from east to west.
And it only worked because of the guards, tripwires, and killing fields on the eastern side of it. It's a "yuge" understatement to say *that* kind of wall on our border with Mexico is totally unjustified.
I'm sure you've heard of optics - not the study of light and sight, but "the way in which an event or course of action is perceived by the public." The rest of the world doesn't see DJT's wall as reinforcing the rule of law, because there are better ways to do that.
It looks racist. Of course it looks racist; look at it! You want to build a wall on the southern border, but not the northern border? That's not about border enforcement, that's about Mexicans. It doesn't matter how many nationalities come across the southern border.
It does not matter. Because we're talking about optics, not facts (or even alternate facts). It will *look* like we have a problem with Mexicans, or "brown people" in general, because look around: the stage is already set in America for the world to perceive us as racist.
Slavery got us off to a great start, right? But even if we're just talking about the last twenty, fifty, hundred years, we give Mexicans (and Central Americans in general) our lowest-paying, lowest-dignity jobs. Shit jobs.
If they're undocumented, or if we can keep them from unionizing, we don't even pay them minimum wage. Because fuck them, right? Surely all of our problems are their fault. Middle-Easterners get it even worse.
If we can't outright ban them from entering the US and deport them to Hell, well, we're damned sure going to assume they're terrorists and blame them for every rape, murder, disappearance, and busted satellite dish within a hundred miles.
Do you think the rest of the world is somehow blind/stupid enough to be unaware of how we treat non-white people? We'll harass you if you're even off-white, and we'll freak if you're definitely brown. We'll try to deport & ban you. We'll pick fights with you to get you arrested.
And the darker you are the more likely you are to be shot on sight or framed for shooting somebody. If a bomb goes off anywhere near you, you might as well shoot yourself and avoid the hassle of a SWAT team knocking your door down.
And then DJT swaggers outta the corporate sludge --the most unpresidential President in decades, perhaps in all of American history-- and pushes for a wall. Not just any wall, but a "steel barrier" against immigrants. As if every last one of us wasn't descended from immigrants.
Not just any immigrants, but specifically the browner ones to our south. The poorer ones. The disadvantaged ones.
What is the world supposed to think? That we're doing it out of a genuine fear for our economy? We blow 382.8 billion-with-a-B dollars on fast food every year (US Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor). In the face of such colossal waste, 5 or 6 billion for a wall is almost a joke.
Especially given that walls don't even work. That doesn't mean "Damn, just build it already!" It means it's obviously not a real priority because we're not even blowing as much money on it as we blow on making ourselves fat and unhappy.
The wall isn't about sovereignty/border enforcement. That would be a real thing, and it would deserve and get more consideration than a big ass wall conceived by a pathetic wretch who got elected to the Presidency against the will of the people by a weird-ass "Electoral College."
Hell, the GOP doesn't need tax money for the wall. If you all just put your lunch money in mason jars for a year, you'd have more than enough to build a nice big wall and paint Trump's fat unhappy face all over it.
Optics. The wall looks racist. And some of our kinder allies might like to give us the benefit of the doubt, but because "actions speak louder than words" your denials remove the doubt and confirm that we are in fact racist idiots who have forgotten our own roots.
If nothing else, THINK about it for a second. DJT HIRES undocumented immigrants by the dozens/hundreds, and the entire Trump family utilizes underpaid labor around the world. He does not care, even a tiny little bit, about stopping undocumented immigration.
.@threadreaderapp unroll
