Donald Trump seems to think that the solution to everything is walls. If he could just build enough walls, the American people would be very happy and they would love him. I came up with four examples. There may be more.
The racist anti-immigration wall
The economic tariff wall
The isolationist foreign-policy wall
The psychological “I am Donald Trump and I am a stable genius” wall
I have a few thoughts about each of these…
Trump’s racist anti-immigration wall
Progressives and liberals look to the future and plan, with hope in their hearts, for better times to come. Conservatives resist change and view it with a cynical eye. They have memories of how much better the past was. They claim they want to Make America Great Again. They look back to a golden age when everyone was happy. Steel mills! Coal mines! Cheap gas! Racism!
One part of Trump’s Make America White Again program is to build a physical wall to keep out Mexicans and Central Americans. Trump claims the immigrants are mostly criminals, drug dealers, and carriers of infectious diseases. He says if your life is less happy than it used to be and if you’re making less money than you once did, you should hate the immigrants (because it’s their fault). Plus, their skin is brown. And we should ban all immigrants from certain Muslim countries. Don’t hate the rich people who got a huge tax cut, the people who killed your union and cut your wages and outsourced jobs to contractors and temp workers.
He believes brown people are just streaming over the border. But the majority of undocumented aliens arrive here legally (through airports, seaports, or highways). Then they overstay their visa. Building a wall on the southern border doesn’t stop any of these people.
Trump’s economic tariff wall
Trump thinks we should punish countries that make things that Americans buy, like automobiles, electronics, clothing, or whatever. So he places tariffs on imported goods. But when he erects these tariff walls, it leads to retaliatory tariffs from other countries. If the price of steel (in the U.S.) goes up because of tariffs, the price of automobiles made in the U.S. goes up. If he tries to stop imports from China, then China places their own tariffs on soybeans (raising the price in China) – and soybean farmers in the U.S. see their selling price fall below the cost of production.
His tariff walls are destroying the American economy bit by bit.
Trump’s isolationist foreign-policy wall
Some countries are good and reliable friends of America. They’re allies. But Trump is destroying long-time alliances with our friends; he has no respect for NATO, the EU, Japan, England, Canada – the list goes on. He insults the leaders of friendly countries. It’s as if he thinks the United States doesn’t need anyone else.
He announces that ISIS is destroyed and wants to abandon support of the Kurds (who fear the Turks). Then he changes his mind and might stay in Syria. He pisses off all our allies by abandoning the anti-nuke agreement with Iran. He insults Canada and Mexico. He calls Kim Jong-Un a nice guy and a good friend and declares victory. He has absolutely no logical (or sane) foreign policy at all.
Trump’s psychological “I’m a genius” wall
This is the most insidious wall. Trump absolutely refuses to admit that he’s wrong about anything. He thinks he’s a genius. If his advisors or cabinet members disagree with him, he either fires them or they quit. He thinks if he says something, that makes it true.
In my lifetime, I’ve seen some Presidents who were very smart and a few who weren’t so smart, but none of them tried to run the Federal Government by himself. Previous Presidents were able to delegate authority. Previous Presidents listened to their advisors and were willing to back down if an idea seemed to be wrong. Not Trump. He’s pigheaded. He thinks only his opinion matters. And sometimes he changes his opinion the next day.
I just hope we can last another couple years and he’ll lose the next election. Let’s hope future historians tell the truth about him.
When he’s feeling sorry for himself in the oval office and he’s wondering why he’s not popular, the answer is simple. He built too many walls.