The Wall – By Trump (#257)

America is in the midst of a political civil war, and it’s about a ‘Wall’. This wall, or the lack of it, promised by President Trump to his supporters, is to be built on the country’s southern border with Mexico to keep migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, drugs, criminals, terrorists, and all other means of evil from America the ‘Promised Land’. To the World’s oppressed, persecuted, and poor, and those that just want to partake, or have a shot at, the proverbial ‘American Dream’ as it has been America’s historic promise, a wall has gone up, just not physically.

The building of this ‘big beautiful concrete wall’ was a core campaign promise of Trump’s, repeated at every rally, then and now, along with his equally oft repeated promise that Mexico would pay for it; ‘believe me folks’, he would say.

To his supporters such promises were manna from heaven, a huge physical barrier, insurmountable and beautiful, protecting them from all kinds of foreign undesirables, at no cost, it was simply irresistible. They believed him.

Propelled by such bold ‘no-cost’ promises, Trump was voted in as the 45th American President by his Republican base, with the additional bonus of the Republican Party also controlling the other two branches of government, the House of Representatives, and the Senate.

With full control of all government for two years, Trump did not fullfil his promise to his base and did not build the wall.

And, he could not get Mexico to agree to pay for it, in spite of all manner of dire threats regarding their status as a major trading partner to America. Mexico refused the call to pay for the wall, just as repeatedly as Trump insisted it would.

Trump then turned to the Republican controlled government to get the money from them, and they balked, stalling him as frequently as he waffled on the cost and the nature of the wall itself.

The estimates as to the cost of the wall changed almost as often as the exact nature of the wall itself. Because, as time went on and no one took his wall seriously enough, his Republican lawmakers (in majority) didn’t, the Democrats certainly didn’t, and to the Mexicans it became a national cause to spurn and mock the mere idea, Trump started to waffle, repeatedly.

The ‘big beautiful concrete wall’ started to morph into all sorts of variations of some kind of a barrier, a designer wall, a see through wall, a partial fence partial wall, an invisible electrified wall, an energy producing solar panel studded wall, and more recently steel slats rather than the concrete wall, because as per Trump, ‘steel is more beautiful than concrete’ (who knew). There may have been more variations of this wall not mentioned, as it is incredibly difficult to keep up with Trump’s overly fertile and imaginative brain, which keeps changing its own mind.

Plus, the means to fund the wall have gone through almost as many variations as the design, nature and cost of the wall. It started with Mexico paying for the full cost, ‘believe me’. Then, it changed to, ‘Mexico will pay for it in some manner’. Then it became, ‘Mexico will pay for it in some manner, eventually’. Then Mexico will pay for it indirectly through the new version of NAFTA. Then, Mexico will pay for it … and on it on it went. There was also Trump’s suggestion that the energy produced by the solar panels will pay for it.

In the meantime, while Mexico does not pay for it, Congress will pay for it. Now, there is even a crowd funding effort by some of his supporters to pay for it.

And just when Trump seemed to want to forget all about the wall, now that Congress is controlled by the Democrats, who refused to entertain the idea of ‘a medieval solution to a 21st Century problem’, Trump got a rude reminder as to who controls him, the Far-Right fringe of the Republican party with spokespersons such as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, who took him to task for capitulating on his core promise to the Far-Right Americans who voted for him.

They also called him some unflattering names which jolted him to a rude awakening that there are costs attached, even to his ‘no-cost’ promises made in the giddy heat of rally rhetoric.

Trump has been forced to back off his backing off the wall. Forced by people like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh back to the promise of the wall, and his lack of spine having been pointed out by Ann when he capitulated, Trump has visibly stiffened his spine in his insistence on having Congress pay for the wall, as Mexico is still adamantly refusing and all private contributions from his base are supposedly falling short.

But, as the Democrats now control Congress (irony of ironies) Trump is being forced to ask Democrats to let American tax payers pay for the wall (they are still refusing). And Trump, in spite of telling his base how very, very rich he is, repeatedly, has not been heard to volunteer to pay for the wall himself.

Since nobody seems to want to pay for the wall, Trump has decided that shutting down part of the U.S. government indefinitely, was the correct solution in getting part of the funding to pay for the wall.

So now, a part of the U.S. government is not functioning because Trump couldn’t get anyone to pay for the wall. [The hundreds of thousands of Federal Employees that have been furloughed or sent home because of the government shutdown certainly can’t pay for the wall, because now they are not getting paid at all.]

That physical wall on the Southern border of the United States is not built as to Trump’s descriptions of it to his supporters, ‘big, beautiful, bold, high, solid, see through, concrete, fence, designed, solar, steel slats’ etc., or as he put lately, ‘whatever the Democrats want to call it’ (didn’t know they wanted to name it).

But a wall certainly has gone up in America, while Trump has trumped around the country promoting his wall, and it’s a seemingly big, bold, totally opaque, insurmountable one (certainly not a very beautiful one though).

The wall that Trump has built, is between the Americans who label themselves for Trump, Conservatives, and Republicans – and those that oppose him, the Progressive, Liberal, and Democrats – and that wall seems to be getting higher, is solid, cannot be seen through, is impenetrable, and costing America its very soul and identity. It’s a wall that Trump is proud to have built bigger and higher than anyone else in history. As he would say, ‘Believe me folks’, and we do.

#Trump #Mexico #President #America #World #Republican #Government #Democratic #NAFTA #Fed #political