Trump shown tunnels dug by smugglers underneath current border wall.
But I guess Trump’s reaction was more along the lines of, “We’ll dig a ditch, a bigly ditch and we’ll build the wall underground and Mesopotamia will pay for it, believe me”. All to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
The reality is that border crossings are at a near historic low, as is crime near the border. There is in fact reverse immigration of Mexicans — more Mexicans are leaving the US for Mexico than are coming to the US from Mexico. And it’s not about terrorism either — More people on the terrorist watch list have been apprehended at the Canadian border than at the US border. We caught 6 terrorists at the Mexican border which is 1,954 miles long and is patrolled by 16,605 agents which is a density of 8.5 agents/mile. Meanwhile, we caught 41 terrorists at the Canadian border, which is 5,525 miles long and is secured by 2,048 agents which is a density of .4 agents/mile.
Given the numbers it is not logical to address a supposed problem on the southern border when you have 7 times as many non-US persons in the Terrorist Screening Database attempting to cross the northern border. With the disparity of resources it would make more sense to direct increased resources to the Canadian border. But I’m sure that the emphasis upon the southern border has *nothing* to do with the race of the people who are south of that border. (Cue dog whistles).
And as I pointed out earlier, the only walls that have ever worked — the Berlin Wall, the Israeli separation wall, etc. — have worked only because they’re manned by sociopaths willing to gun down unarmed men, women, and children to stop them from going over or under the wall. Unless we’re going to hire over 100,000 sociopaths to start shooting unarmed civilians, all that a 12 foot wall creates is a market for 14 foot ladders — or shovels.
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
In a country with 300+million residents such as the U.S., how hard could it be to find 100,000 socios who’d be happy to machine-gun women and children? Especially after those Merkins have been propagandised for decades to worship hatred as patriotism? In WW II, the Germans didn’t have any trouble filling the ranks of the Einsatzgruppen. They even had ghouls from the local communities volunteering to help round up Jews, Gypsies and other undesirables, feed the troops (“Danke du vor your SService!”), provide places for them to billet, etc. Now that “communities” are ideological things, not based on geography but on self-chosen beliefs mediated through mass media (especially on teh Internets tubez), you think there won’t be MILLIONS of murderous bastards (and bastardettes) slavering to support the effort?
I hate to say it, but Bukko is right on the money!
I hope Bukko is wrong, but fear he is right :(.
I hope I’m wrong too! Unlike mental patients, who are absolutely CERTAIN of the most outlandish delusions. I sometimes ask them “Do you think you might be wrong about _______? Have you been right about EVERYTHING in life?” My approach never works at bringing them some insight to reality. But I have fun playing mind-games (in a therapeutic, non-harmful way, or so I hope) with them.
On the bright side, even though things in the world are playing out as I expected, broadly speaking, it’s at a slower pace than I anticipated. When one can see what looks like the logical end-game of a trajectory, one cannot anticipate the speed at which events will happen. The human body has adaptive techniques to prolong life, such as the kidneys regulating acid/base balance in the blood when people start getting acidotic due to long-term respiratory failure and CO2 buildup. Countries can do similar things for a while. I can’t find an authentic source for the quote “There’s a lot of ruin in a country” (i.e. it takes a lot to destroy a nation.) Adam Smith? H.L. Mencken? Maynard Keynes? It’s true, though.
The good news for me, and Tux, and most of his older, well-educated, mentally agile commenters, is that we’ll probably live out our natural lifespans without losing too many years to a premature collapsedeath. My daughter, and everyone younger than her, I’m not so sure. I’ve been warning her, and others, for years. But Cassandras are never heeded until it’s too late. Civilisations have fallen apart repeatedly ever since homo sapiens got more complex than hunter-gatherer bands. Not everyone died. It sucks to be in the MIDDLE of that dynamic, but the next generation spawned by the survivors who came through the bottleneck will be able to find some joy in their New Normal. My big question is whether they will envy US more for what we had, or hate us more for what we did?
So Terrell County, TX, population near 1,000, if you count some tumbleweed, has a Sheriff who is a fervent supporter of Donnie. Interestingly, he’s also adamantly opposed to a wall on the Mexican border. Most of the border here has 300 foot plus cliffs, and the areas that don’t have thick, scruby brush.
The Sheriff is very clear that, even at those spots, a wall fined him no good. He needs bodies and technology…border crossers in this area can vanish quickly in the scrub, and are found via people, sensors and drones. The morons who suggestba wall in this area always say “they know the most about walls”, they don’t.
The moral, professionals, not guts, is what we need to trust.
Just wondering, how come all the rednecks want “The Wall”. “The Wall” killed Dale Earnhardt.
Few mention the ecological disaster that WALL would bring, concrete production is very high in CO2. Pelosi is right, WALL is immoral. Civilizations that need walls are on the downward slope. Not needed and not wanted except for the weak-minded. And Putin. Trump’s treason marches on.