Blog #127 WALLS

In a state of heightened excitement, the sergeant of the castle night watch sounded the royal alarm. He then dutifully reported to his captain, “Forsooth, we are this night under siege!” The Orange King, so suddenly roused from his usual deep inebriate slumber, exclaimed “Zounds!” Then, when advised of events, ordered, “Sirrah, uncover the moat, raise the drawbridge, make ready the catapult and the hot oil urns, send the long bowmen to the ramparts.”

His Serene Majesty was advised by his new intelligence minister that on this occasion, the invading hoards were not the dreaded Huns, nor the feared Vandals nor even the merciless Visigoths; it was an invasion by the tan-skinned agriculture workers who are exerting pressure to breach the close. To which the Orange Monarch confidently replied, “We shall smite them full-sore.”

It appears that, prominently among his promises of infrastructure development projects, the newly elected President, during his campaign, envisioned the construction of a “huge” barrier wall across the southern underbelly of our country as the proffered solution to the “immigration problem.” The wall would serve to deny incursion by those who, without proper paperwork, would inveigle themselves “bigly” into the United States under the pretense of seeking a better life for themselves and their family when, as he has famously stated, their true intention is to rape and commit crime.

One can confidently assume that the new sovereign has not interrupted a, moment of his privileged life to take in any world history. His reductionist solution to immigration issues can be satisfying only to the populist hoards that elected him. It would take but a short excursion into world history to observe that not one, of even the most celebrated and redoubtable walls, ever served their exclusionary purpose. The long historical list includes Hadrian’s Wall (Britain), The Great Wall of China (Ming Dynasty), The Walls of Jericho (Old Testament), and, more recently, The Maginot Line (French) and the Berlin Wall. The new President is sorely behind the times and clearly impractical. If a wall were, in theory, appropriate and necessary (which it most certainly is not) the modern state of electrical science would provide a better solution than old stones and mortar.

It is no less than shocking to any rudimentary moral analysis that our new chief executive, his many sycophants, and principal supporters, appear to lack any capacity for self-conscious awareness of, and compassion for, those other human beings who lead far less fortunate lives than theirs. Countless others barely subsist, lacking adequate food, health care, shelter, and other basic needs. When reminded of these unpleasant facts, so many then resort to self-righteous rationalization or look to diversion.

A wall of exclusion from concern for others is a mental construction and is engineered by those who find it convenient and comfortable to do so. In defense of Marie Antoinette, who famously stated: “If the people have no bread, let them eat cake,” it is an historic fact that she was completely oblivious of the life of the common people.  The people to whom we now refer, by contrast, are indeed, fully aware of the ever- present plight of the needy.

The real wall, dear reader, consists of an elective mental barrier protectively and insensitively constructed around the consciousness by those who choose to exclude reality when it appears disturbing and to ignore calls for help, or at the very least, empathy.     -p.