America has always been a country that rejects walls.
High culture: the great American poet, Robert Frost, sets us back on our heels, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," .
Low culture: the Gene Audrey cowboy anthem echoes loudly in American imagery,
"Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
Don't fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don't fence me in"
In our historical imagination, Ronald Reagan stands at the Berlin Wall and speaks words that resonate for the ages: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
That afternoon, Reagan said:
We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
Across the world and across history, the history of walls built — to keep people out or in — is also the history of people managing to get around, over and under them. Some come tumbling down.
History is full of examples of dictator's engineering, thwarted by goal-oriented rank amateurs who would not be stopped by walls.
Darcy Eveleigh wrote an overview (New York Times, April 2016) about walls and despots who deceived themselves and the people they dominated with illusions about the invincibility of the walls they constructed: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/upshot/what-history-teaches-us-about-walls.html.)
It is lost to history whether the big 3 - Hadrian, Qin Shi Huang and Nikita Khrushchev - ever uttered "I will build."But build they did, and what happened? Yup, the walls were pushed or came tumbling down.
Has anyone told Trump that a leader will be known by the company he keeps? Hadrian? Qin Shi Huang? Khrushchev? Trump's kind of guys. There is no surprise that Trump would choose to enter history In the company of history's recognized vermin.
Walls are monuments to selves, not aspirations of free people.
Trump hates Freedom. He and his tribe hate our national dream of perfect freedom. Remember Stephen Miller's attack on the Statue of Liberty and the welcoming Emma Lazarus poem which graces its base: "Give me your tired, your poor..." A wall is a Simpleton's means to end Openness and Freedom.
By wanting a wall, Trump hates America as it has aspired to be for almost 250 years.
He loves only property, private property. His attacks on the National Parks, which may bewilder some, are deep hatred for community and communal rights. For him, and his followers, there is only property, private and controllable.
Trump is material. America is metaphor.
Opposing Trump's Wall is our shared metaphor of embracing America itself as a wild and open frontier.
Opposing Trump's Wall is our shared metaphor of embracing America which welcomes people from all over the world.
Donald Trump has promised to build a wall on the United States-Mexican border that he says will be big, beautiful, tall and strong, and he has said Mexico will pay for it.
When Trump says he can make Mexico pay, he is declaring Mexico (and other people he see as less than White America) are our thralls, our servants, even our slaves, ready to do what he and we order.
His ideal, set by the demand that Mexico pay, is a Trumpian America, cast in his image - America as the world's bully.
“Donald Trump has devoted his life to fame. He lives to immortalize himself. This is no casual narcissist. Huge. Bigly. Think Trump Towers. Think his preposterous claim, in the sixth month of his Presidency, to a place on Mt. Rushmore. Aspirational monuments to his self pre-occupy him." ("Talking Statues," September 3, 2017 https://www.voices4america.com/core/dashboard/editor/2474150845#publish)
Has he come to recognize that his face won't disfigure Mt. Rushmore? He has turned his hopes now to a WALL, as his monument to self.
The boy whose father was a slumlord in Queens dreamed of a Tower in Manhattan- gold, gaudy, tasteless to many, splendid to him.
As Michael Cohen's testimony has made clear, the reality show candidate Trump was willing to risk all for a Tower in Moscow.
So is it with The Trump WALL.
Trump wants America to be like East Germany or China or the ole USSR- visually identified not by the Statue of Liberty but by a concrete barrier or a steel curtain, a visible symbol of disdain and contempt for freedom, a barrier that would define who is in and who is not.
The insatiable, unfit occupant of the White House, the Bully of Pennsylvania Avenue, seeks a permanent monument to self.
He is willing to destroy a nation and its people to get it.
Trump is not America. Trump's WALL is not America.
Only one answer to Trump and his WALL will do.
#TrumpResign
December 31, 2018
Post Script. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." My take on why Trump wants a WALL, and why Pelosi, Schumer and we must oppose it. I hope you will read and share this. #TrumpResign
