Donald Trump is obsessed with his border wall, an obvious monument to his delusions of grandeur and bigotry. Supposed national-defense Republicans are so afraid of challenging Trump that they’ve looked the other way while he’s raided the Pentagon budget to pay for the wall. Last fiscal year, he stole from military pensions to fund wall construction. This year, it’s from aircraft purchases totaling nearly $4 billion. Together, that’s $10 billion diverted from the military.
Now imagine if a Democratic president diverted money from the Pentagon for anything. But under this new doctrine, apparently, that Democratic president would be justified in taking from the Pentagon for any “national security” need. Like, say, combating climate change? Yet we all know these Trump rules don’t apply to Democrats.
This theft might be somewhat justifiable if the wall could at least be deemed to be effective at doing what it’s supposed to be doing. But, ha ha ha, it’s a wall. Unless you saturate the wall with the kind of manpower that surrounds the White House, it doesn’t take much to defeat.
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Ladders, for one, are very effective. Some people don’t even need ladders to scale the wall. And really, why even ascend the wall vertically when a simple saw can open up a portal to the other side? As The Washington Post reports, “The breaches have been made using a popular cordless household tool known as a reciprocating saw that retails at hardware stores for as little as $100. When fitted with specialized blades, the saws can slice through one of the barrier’s steel-and-concrete bollards in minutes.”
So now we know that a ladder can defeat the wall, as can anyone with climbing skills, and also saws. But did you know that sometimes you don’t need any of that, because the walls have gates literally built into them? And those gates have to be left open for months on end? Again The Washington Post reports, having taken control of the “How to defeat Trump’s wall” beat with utter gusto, “President Trump's border wall probably will require the installation of hundreds of storm gates to prevent flash floods from undermining or knocking it over, gates that must be left open for months every summer during ‘monsoon season’ in the desert, according to U.S. border officials, agents and engineers familiar with the plans. The open, unmanned gates in remote areas already have allowed for the easy entry of smugglers and migrants into the United States.”
You see, without the gates, gushing rain water piles debris against the wall, preventing water from streaming through. Once clogged, the wall cannot sustain the force of that water runoff, and it topples the wall. So the antidote is to open up big ol’ gates so the water can get through, as well as immigrants, which … kind of defeats the purpose of the whole affair, doesn’t it?
So where are we? Ladders, saws, and water are all enemies of the border wall, and even without those, some people can still scale the wall. And there’s one more enemy of the wall: air.
