Thoughts on arising. So much has been written and discussed about building a wall, about keeping out those who are somehow different than us. It has been put about that this wall will be immensely long and tall and thick, and that none of the undesirables will ever be able to breach it. Such a wall! And, I wonder, what will this extraordinary piece of super-mural creativity be made of, who will pay for it, and what will it cost? Will it be of brick and mortar, crenelated aluminum, wood, or stone faced with exposed aggregate? Will it be underwritten by Mexico, Americans paying a duty on imported goods, or the tooth fairy? Some say the prohibitive expense will be at least six billion, others that it will easily exceed twenty; and when will this mighty wall be erected? This is a question I am sure was on the minds of millions of Han Chinese so many years ago, thousands of East Germans in the last century, and Cary Grant in some funky film I saw years ago.
Is this a question that plagues you and besets your sense of humanity? Rest assured and calm your fears. The wall you fear is already here and has been for some time. Yes, it is distinctly American in its most recent flavour and incarnation, but it is a product of too many among our denizenry. It is a wall constructed of the most durable bigotry and unassailable ignorance. Brick by racist brick of incontrovertible thoughtlessness and stupidity have been cemented together by supremacist and fascist mortar into a monolith of mindlessness. The cost of this travesty has been borne and continues to be borne by all of us, and try as we might to blow our trumpets and effect the dissolution of this wall of Jericho, it lives on in the hearts of our collective conscious, fueled by imagined fear and unimaginable horror at the prospect of opening our hearts to others.
