The 'Great Wall' of America

Monoliths to fear, vanity and racism

In 2,500 years, will visitors to North America take trips to the border with Mexico to marvel at the mighty "wall" built there in the early 21st Century?

Not likely.

The Great Wall of China can be viewed from space. People can walk on top of it. They can take picture postcards from it.

The current U.S. barrier with Mexico is a hodgepodge of slats, walls and wires that has all the architectural bearing of a junkyard fence.

Trump's "national emergency" declaration to continue building a barrier along the border with Mexico will not stop illegal immigration and isn't even necessary. So, let's spend billions we don't have on something we don't need. Or as humorist Andy Borowitz wrote: "Nation with Crumbling Bridges and Roads Excited to Build Giant Wall."

Despite Trump's repeated assurances, Mexico won't pay for the wall.

It's likely, though, that illegal immigrants will do the actual work because almost all "legal" Americans don't want to work that hard.

Also, we don't believe in permanence in the USA. We build things and tear them down when they're about 40 years old. We know that nothing lasts forever, so why even try. That's the American spirit.

The other American spirit is a fear and/or disrespect of people who don't look white.

Well, we like them only if they pick the fruit in the fields, clean the hotel rooms at the resorts and make Mexican food in the restaurants and then go out of sight and out of mind.

Coincidentally, some Trump-backing farmers are struggling because they can't get enough migrant workers to tend to their fields and crops.

It appears that those farthest from the southern border are most in favor of a wall. In other words, those areas that are the whitest fear the brown ones the most.

But, for all intents and purposes, the wall was built years ago.

With the the help of Fox News, Republicans erected walls between Americans over things like reason and reality; science and truth; fact and fiction.

It doesn't really matter if more slats get erected along the southern border with Mexico.

The wall is already built. We are divided from each other.

And no one will be able to see a trace of any of it in 2,000 years.