The Border Wall is For Scared Old White People in Pennsylvania and Nebraska, Not for Actual Border Security

Trump’s border wall executive order is beyond idiotic. The idea of the wall is incredibly stupid, even if you want to secure the border. First, there is already a lot of wall in areas near population centers. But that wall is incredibly porous because you can just tunnel underneath it. I have personally been taken to a trailer in Arizona where a tunnel came out (although the current resident was not interested in allowing us to actually see it, as you might imagine). Second, building a wall in the desert is a terrible use of resources. Third, the idea of the wall is to make scared old white people in rural America feel more secure. It has nothing to do with actually securing the border in any useful way. And nearly everyone on the border itself already knows this. That’s why there is not a single member of Congress from Texas, the majority of whom are really awful humans, who has come out in support of this. Some have gone after Trump directly, such as Filemon Vela, who represents Brownsville in Congress:

U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela took a poison pen to the Republican presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, in an open letter Monday morning.

“Mr. Trump, you’re a racist and you can take your border wall and shove it up your ass,” the Brownsville Democrat wrote in a lengthy missive to the real estate magnate.

Later Monday, Vela elaborated on his remarks in an MSNBC interview.

“Well, I would have liked to have spoken in a much more diplomatic fashion, but I felt like I had to speak to Donald Trump in language he understands,” he said.

I like that guy.

But it’s also Republicans. Will Hurd actually represents the vast emptiness that is south and southwest Texas.

The Republican congressman whose district includes more miles of U.S.-Mexico border than any other came out against President Trump’s new executive action ordering the “immediate construction” of a border wall to block undocumented immigrants from entering the United States.

“Building a wall is the most expensive and least effective way to secure the border,” Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.) said in a statement late Wednesday.

“Each section of the border faces unique geographical, cultural, and technological challenges that would be best addressed with a flexible, sector-by-sector approach that empowers the agents on the ground with the resources they need.”

Hurd, one of 38 Texans in Congress, represents territory stretching from San Antonio to El Paso, including 800 miles of border. His 23rd District is majority-Hispanic and politically competitive: Hurd won a second term over Democrat Pete Gallego by fewer than 4,000 votes in November.

On the same trip that I saw the trailer with the tunnel, I was talking to a rancher in southern Arizona, who routinely used the term “wetback” to talk about immigrants, but who thought the border wall was incredibly dumb and had already had a deal with his rancher across the border in Sonora that when their respective cattle got across the fence, they had cut a secret hole in it where they would exchange the cattle.

This what actual life on the border looks like. Not that Trump or Goebbels Bannon care. Or his core supporters in the Midwest and South. They know nothing. Except that Mexicans are scary for some reason.

Also worth noting the utter ecological catastrophe of building the wall. And of course the $5 tomatoes in January if the Trump Tax to pay for the wall is enacted.

How bad has this gotten? I am now looking to Vicente Fox as a moral beacon. Vicente Fox!!! Even Enrique Pena Nieto is bright enough to make hay out of this.

In conclusion, I will be rooting for Mexico to defeat the U.S. in soccer for the rest of my life.