Flummoxed

Trump announced today that he had reached a deal with Congress to reopen government and pay federal employees for three weeks. The fact that this comes after more than a month of very bad optics and very bad outcomes seems secondary to the fact that his friend, Roger Stone, was indicted today for a variety of federal offenses but what do I know. Perhaps Trump really does want government to function appropriately and not at the whim of a two year old.

But no one, least of all Trump, knows what the three week hiatus will bring. I can almost guarantee it will be a hiatus in which Trump tries to assume the high ground so that he can turn around and put the blame on Democrats but Schumer and Pelosi are experienced politicians and negotiators so that tactic seems unlikely to be a winner for Trump.

Despite KellyAnne Conway's repeated assertions that Trump is not insisting on a wall, his announcement today made it clear that he does really want a wall. He has already begun the legal work to use eminent domain to take American land to build a wall (in some unspecified place in Texas) so some American is going to have to give up land for Trump's ego. This is all despite the fact proven by records and statistical analysis that the vast majority of drugs come from other entry points, the vast majority of undocumented people come from overstaying visas, and the very few foreign terrorists who have killed in the US came through the Canadian border not the Mexican border. Sure, there are cases of undocumented people who kill Americans and that's a tragedy, but the best guess by fact checkers is that the number is under 500 per year. That number is small in comparison to Americans killing Americans. Just in the last two days there have been more than a dozen murders by Americans on Americans that have reached national attention, so it isn't as if shutting off  any entry from other countries will prevent senseless gun deaths--or drug use, or robberies, or child trafficking, or rapes.

One of the ideas that made the United States what it is in mythology and imagination is that we had frontiers and open spaces. Even after the last bit of land mass in the continental area became a state we still yearned for the open idea of exploration and wonder. When we begin to physically close those open spaces, we begin to mimic the failed ideas of the European continent, the ideas that led to devastating conflicts and unspeakable death. I don't support open borders, i.e., unlimited entry, but high walls are not a way to encourage the spirit of the US. Perhaps Trump supporters don't want to encourage that spirit, preferring instead to stay insular and close minded. All newcomers to the US throughout history have been scorned, derided, and mistreated. Some of my own forebears endured that and none were deterred from staying in the United States. That's what makes us who we are.