“They say a wall is medieval. Well, so is a wheel,” Trump argued.
The problem with his remark is that this
isn’t the same as this:
He’s made a stupid argument that assumes technology is static and never evolves or improves. Nobody uses medieval wheels or builds medieval walls anymore. Modern civilization couldn’t function with 500-year-old technologies. Today a virtual wall consisting of electronic monitoring devices is far more effective than any physical barrier, and when you talk about our southern border, improved electronic monitoring is one of the things we should be investing in.
Of course, everyone knows the purpose of Trump’s wall isn’t to keep immigrants out, it’s primarily to keep a campaign promise and secondarily to look like he can push around Democrats. Politicians of both parties support border security. Democrats understand Trump’s wall isn’t the best way to do it. Republicans back up Trump’s wall demands because they don’t want to cross Trump. If they cared about our country, they would join with Democrats in standing up to Trump, ending the shutdown, and enacting and funding real border security.
Using science and applied science a wheel is a wheel. The wheels on the wagon or ox cart are functionally the same as the ones on the jet airliner.
Same thing with walls. The walls of the Alamo kept Santa Anna’s much larger force out for days at extensive cost. They worked until an overwhelming force managed to breach the walls. The Berlin wall (built after a fence was built that made fleeing to the west more difficult unless you were in Berlin and 20% of the population of East Germany had left for the west.) The East German’s and Russian’s built the wall and it went from 233,000 fleeing in six months to 5000 fleeing until the walk came down more than two decades later.
We could take a page from the Turk’s and simply adjust the border further south. Or threaten Mexico with American refugees. Bet they build a wall very quickly. Gotta keep the Gringos out after all, and no unless you can afford to pay some heavy bribes you can never become a Mexican citizen.
And what of the international rules that the first nation that a refuge enters is the nation responsible for the refuge. It’s an international rule. If that nation cannot handle the exodus they can ask for assistance. So Mexico could ask for help from China or Russia as well as the United States to send these refugees to. One way tickets to Russia or China could quickly show that this is not a refugee crises.
Of course there is the Turkish option that Turkey is using in Syria today, moving the border south by employing military units to occupy the nearby provinces.
NOr have the Democrats and you suggested removing all the existing barriers because they do not work. Odd that offer has not yet come up in negotiations.