I'm Right Again Dot Com THE GREAT WALL OF MEXICO or The Cult of Personality
"I would build a great wall and nobody builds better walls than me, believe me. And, I'll build that wall very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall... mark my words." -Doctor Trump's Magic Elixer Medicine Show.
"I will build a great wall—The Seigfried Line across our Western Front. I will retake the Rhineland from France. I will rebuild the military and destroy our enemies." - Adolph Hitler. By now hundreds of millions of viewers have seen film where Hitler whipped up a frenzy in massed tens of thousands of Germans by telling them what they wanted to hear. He convinced them that he could make Germany great again, if only he could fend off the hordes coming across their eastern borders—just one part of the "The Jewish Question."
His favorite term for Jews, "Back Stabbers." He accused them of betraying Germany by supporting the Allies in World War I and agreeing to reparations for the depredations wrought by German Armies in Holland, Belgium and France. His indictments eventually included Crooked Churchill, Crooked Stalin and Crooked Roosevelt.
The use of the first person imperative very definitely includes "Secretary" Clinton, and practically every seeker of political office. If Hillary is unable to operate the finicky details of a smart phone in tandem with a server, how in the name of all of the Saints, including Mother Teresa, who never used one, can she lead the most complex, cranky, and vulnerable machine that ever existed—called The United States of America? (Oh, so Bill is going to help? That's what I fear the most.)
For one who has examined over 300 miles of the US-Mexico border from both sides numerous times, nothing is as ridiculous as saying, "We are going to stop Mexicans from entering the USA by building an inexpensive wall." Just as I, Philip Richardson am going to convince every reader that I am always right with my mental meanderings!
The Donald and many of the Trump cult haven't a clue as to the cost for the best of the current high, closely-spaced, steel shaft fence now gracing 600 to 700 miles of south Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California; only one-third of the actual 2,000 miles involved, but already having cost you and me and the rest of we taxpayers 2.4-billion dollars.
Accountants for CNBC figured the cost at $3.9-million a mile and that's before inflation. Total estimated cost: $10-billion, give or take a billion.
Keep this in mind: I know of an automatic mining machine that when operated by two miners, can dig more tunnels faster than a bulldozer can cover them up. The Narcotics Traffickers have not yet needed to start using them. They do quite well by sinking a hole beneath a structure south of the line and tunneling to another building on the U.S. side, using hand tools. This makes the very idea of an invulnerable steel wall 2,000 miles long, an exercise in self delusion.
The Pima County Medical Examiner's morgue in Tucson receives over 300 cadavers of illegal crossers each year, discovered within a fifty mile radius of his office. Just go to the twin towns of Nogales, 60 miles south of Tucson and watch the young guys scale that wall, with and without a ladder.
I've been trying to imagine what Trump plans to do to make Mexico pay for it. Maybe kill the North American Trade Agreement; Put a tax on products made in Mexico for sales in the USA. This will insure that Mexico will tax tit for tat.
In June, 2016, we imported close to $25-million from them in legal goods, (much of it vegetables) and they imported $19.5 million from us, (According to the Mexican National Institute of Standards—more than 50-percent of all of their foreign imports come from Los Estados Unidos.) That imbalance is more than covered by dollars wired home by workers here. According to the Congressional Budget Office, $20-billlion annually is wired through various remittance (wire) companies in the United States to persons or locations in Mexico,
I got it: Donald wants to take a bite out of every money order remittance sent from Mexican workers in America to the familia back home in Hermosillo.
Finally, in regard to the overuse of the phrase beginning with "I am going to"...Do you suppose Trump understands how a Bill becomes a law and how a handful of brand new members of Congress can delay a bill funneled to their sub-committee, or the chair of the many committees can stop a Bill cold. Or how the Speaker of the House can simply put it in his desk and forget about it.
Ways and Means? There are more ways to kill a Bill than how to bake biscuits! That's why 90 percent of the Bills dropped in the hopper never even get a hearing, let alone get funded, and that's a whole 'nother proposition. Whoever of the two above wins is going to be challenged by gridlock, if one or the other does not control both houses of our Federal legislature.
Perhaps Trump plans to rule by fiat and skip all of the present bother in Washington. That is called a Dictatorship, and the way it's still done in many other countries. That will never happen in America.
-Phil Richardson, Observer of the human condition and storyteller. "He goes doddering on into his old age, making a public nuisance of himself." - Joseph L. Mencken
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