in 1985 Canadian poet Joy Kogawa
wrote a poem entitled Where There’s a Wall.
Where there’s a wall
there’s a way through a
gate or door. There’s even
a ladder perhaps and a
sentinel who sometimes sleeps.
There are secret passwords you
can over hear. There are methods
of torture for extracting clues
to maps of underground passages.
There are zeppelins, helicopters,
rockets, bombs, battering rams,
armies with trumpets whose
all at once blast shatters
the foundations...
Where there’s a wall there are
words to whisper by loose bricks,
wailing prayers to utter, birds
to carry messages taped to their feet
There are letters to be written-
poems even.
Faint as in a dream
is the voice that calls
from the belly
of the wall.
Robert Frost, who spoke at the inauguration of John F Kennedy, once said that “Fences build good neighbors”. It was a signature line in a poem set in a pastoral setting. This line resonants with me as I think to January when another president will be inaugurated. Trump has also spoken, although less eloquently, on the issue of fences or walls and their relationship with neighbors. I believe Trump in his own way believes what Frost says in his poem about making good neighbors, yet he speaks from the point of view of an isolationist.
It has always been my view that when mediation fails, when negotiations fail, when all civilized form of reasoning and civility fail, then people, politicians, revel at building walls.
In an historical perspective from the Great Wall of China to the Berlin Wall and everything in between walls do not have a high success rate. In terms of a cost benefit analysis their return on the dollar in terms of security is actually quite low. Yet even today The Israelis have built a wall separating them from the Palestinians. During the recent Olympics in Rio de Janeiro a wall was erected to prevent foreign tourists from seeing the extreme poverty in certain parts of the city as they made their way to various sport venues.
Walls are the brick and mortar manifestation of social /political failures. Yet Trump has promised to build his wall separating Mexico from the continental United States. let me tell you why this will fail...
It's just so fucked up on so many levels. Any civilization that ever built a wall soon went into decline or was defeated by what ever lay on the other side of the wall. The dirty little secret about walls is that people can go over them, under them or around them. They are not impervious.
Walls are an excellent means to delineate a border and thus avoiding border disputes as to who owns what, but even that is a bit iffie depending on who built the wall...when and where. The Israelis for example have been condemned by the UN and international community, but not the United States, for the placement of their infamous wall. All their wall does is create more tensions and breed more terrorists who grow up wanting to kill and destroy things like walls.
This is not an alternative fact but most of the illegal drugs and immigrants that come into the United States do so through existing border crossing points in some of the 5.5 millions trucks that pass through. It would make more sense to "beef up" up security at these crossings rather than building a wall and charging a 20percent tax which ultimately hurts the American consumer and the American economy. This policy is similar to the process of shooting oneself in the foot.
For Trump to add insult to injury by insisting that somehow the Mexicans will also pay for the wall he and his government erects is particularly bizarre. How this will take place is uncertain, as is the methodology in deporting 11 million people back across the wall. These procedures may be precursors to impeachment and rebellion, but really its only a wall. maybe they can dress it up with some well placed graffitti on both sides so we have something attractive to look at as we contemplate the political failure the wall will grow to represent.
When Emperor Hadrian came to power over the Roman Empire in 122 AD his empire had been shaken by rebellion in Egypt, Libya and Judea, much like today. The great leader took it upon himself to build a very strong wall. It would be a great wall because he said he was really good at walls and maybe just maybe if he played his cards right he could get those rascally barbarian Picts to pay for the wall, but here, as with other historians I merely offer conjecture. I think Hadrian just wanted to make the Empire great again!
Also in the realm of conjecture is the reason(s) as to why Hadrian put so many valuable resources towards a wall. Why not a series of forts, or move in the troop or just bomb them. Some historians state that Hadrian built solely for defensive purposes. Others feel it was actually a mechanism to control unwanted immigrants, while a third hypothesis is that it was built to control customs and therefore facilitate the collection of taxes. Whatever the reason he did commission the building of a wall which varied in width over a distance of 80 Roman miles (117.5 km or 73 US miles), likely because it was a huge distraction. You know the empire is in trouble let's do something to make everyone look the other way...much like the "Bread and Circuses" of Rome. For Trump, today I suspect a case of "Wall Envy."
The wall is a tourist attraction today. Its purpose never clear. Hadrian came and went as did many other leaders who later abandoned the wall. The empire eventually fell. The Picts crossed the wall and the silly bastards never paid for it!
"Something there is that doesn't love a wall..."
Robert Frost
It's just so fucked up on so many levels. Any civilization that ever built a wall soon went into decline or was defeated by what ever lay on the other side of the wall. The dirty little secret about walls is that people can go over them, under them or around them. They are not impervious.
Walls are an excellent means to delineate a border and thus avoiding border disputes as to who owns what, but even that is a bit iffie depending on who built the wall...when and where. The Israelis for example have been condemned by the UN and international community, but not the United States, for the placement of their infamous wall. All their wall does is create more tensions and breed more terrorists who grow up wanting to kill and destroy things like walls.
This is not an alternative fact but most of the illegal drugs and immigrants that come into the United States do so through existing border crossing points in some of the 5.5 millions trucks that pass through. It would make more sense to "beef up" up security at these crossings rather than building a wall and charging a 20percent tax which ultimately hurts the American consumer and the American economy. This policy is similar to the process of shooting oneself in the foot.
For Trump to add insult to injury by insisting that somehow the Mexicans will also pay for the wall he and his government erects is particularly bizarre. How this will take place is uncertain, as is the methodology in deporting 11 million people back across the wall. These procedures may be precursors to impeachment and rebellion, but really its only a wall. maybe they can dress it up with some well placed graffitti on both sides so we have something attractive to look at as we contemplate the political failure the wall will grow to represent.
When Emperor Hadrian came to power over the Roman Empire in 122 AD his empire had been shaken by rebellion in Egypt, Libya and Judea, much like today. The great leader took it upon himself to build a very strong wall. It would be a great wall because he said he was really good at walls and maybe just maybe if he played his cards right he could get those rascally barbarian Picts to pay for the wall, but here, as with other historians I merely offer conjecture. I think Hadrian just wanted to make the Empire great again!
Also in the realm of conjecture is the reason(s) as to why Hadrian put so many valuable resources towards a wall. Why not a series of forts, or move in the troop or just bomb them. Some historians state that Hadrian built solely for defensive purposes. Others feel it was actually a mechanism to control unwanted immigrants, while a third hypothesis is that it was built to control customs and therefore facilitate the collection of taxes. Whatever the reason he did commission the building of a wall which varied in width over a distance of 80 Roman miles (117.5 km or 73 US miles), likely because it was a huge distraction. You know the empire is in trouble let's do something to make everyone look the other way...much like the "Bread and Circuses" of Rome. For Trump, today I suspect a case of "Wall Envy."
The wall is a tourist attraction today. Its purpose never clear. Hadrian came and went as did many other leaders who later abandoned the wall. The empire eventually fell. The Picts crossed the wall and the silly bastards never paid for it!
"Something there is that doesn't love a wall..."
Robert Frost
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