Sunday, January 31, 2016

Donald Trump's Great Wall. It's Been Done Before. How That Turned Out.

This Long and Mighty Wall, Manned By Fierce Troops, Didn't Keep the Mongols Out of China

So, Trump, how's that "wall" supposed to work again?

 (Attribution at bottom)

Donald Trump likes to point at immigrants and claim they are harming the US, and that's very questionable, But more importantly we have to ask if a wall however artfully crafted and strategically placed would do the job.

Do we have an example  of such a strategy used previously? What happened to it?

Well one of those examples is known as one of the Wonders of the World.  It required tremendous effort and the best technology for it's era an used top level expertise.

It's called the Great Wall of China.

Yes it isn't considered a major block these days, but when it was built improved upon, restored, strengthened and manned between the third century BC and the early part of the seventh century AD, it was a technological wonder meant to keep out raiders and invaders including their Mongolian neighbors.  Unfortunately, though, when the Mongols turned their eyes on the fertile lands South of the border, so to speak, that  great wall was of little use.  After taking the Southern lands they maintained it to protect merchants and travelers (according to History). That fact may show that the better rulers won, but their conquest showed that a large wall is probably not a good solution for border control no matter how mighty it is at the time of its founding and while being used and maintained.

Trump's wall may be technologically better at a massive cost to the US, but people scampering over the border is possibly more important than most people realize.  Just about every business relies on immigrant help (often illegal) for back end and sometimes front end work from manufacturing, to cleaning, mechanical expertise and labor and food preparation. not to mention field work in our agricultural areas.

I've met many a child of immigrants who were citizens able to work in the light who were and are more competent at it than most Americans. They often live lives like the rest of us in the working class, carefully, soberly, and with an eye on their children's future.

Where does Donald Trump think he's going to get the workforce to replace the massive immigration bounty we have?  I'm guessing he's thinking like his racist followers that the ghettos are just full of layabouts quite able to work and all they have to do is round them up.  That can be the only thing they're all thinking.

In fact most of the laid off, unemployed, non working folks are likely his followers who have a "bad back" gimpy leg, or whatever so all they can do all day is spam Twitter etc with the glorious attributes of white males and females. I've quietly followed many right wing trolls and watched them find each other and electronically hug and tell each other about their backs, legs, neck pains that keep themselves from working except er on the spam trails about sneaky immigrants and "lazy  (you know which ones) Americans".

Trumps "Great Wall of Hate" will solve nothing, prove nothing, do nothing but enrich possible donors, and upend our economy, while punishing those who've kept it going.


Picture at top of article used via Creative Commons License (CC by 2.0) thanks to May Wong maywong_photos at flickr.com

Apologies for poor fit of picture.  Blogspot has reduced the flexibility it used to have in picture placement by ignoring secondary sizing.  I will try to work with other elements later to make things fit better.