A Brief History of Walls, Ignorance, and Greed
Trump’s Test Walls Are Easily Breeched, and Other Foibles
A WALL-NUT MEETS THE NUTCRACKERS
In pursuit of Mr. Trump’s desire to build a fence along the southern border to keep out people that American racists are worried will steal their coveted toilet-cleaning career, several wall sections were created for evaluation.
After a litany of tests, all of Trump’s commissioned wall designs have been breached. Some walls cut through in less than four hours, some fences in less than twenty-five minutes, and tunneled under in just four days. It takes the Department of Homeland Skullduggery up to twelve hours to respond to an area, so that gives a blowtorch expert an eight hour head start.
Naturally, there are some that don’t want to get all dirty digging underground, so instead they perform a complicated and daring maneuver: They just climb over. To hell with blowtorches and shovels.
A point to all this is something that the past can teach us: The longer the wall, the less effective it is. If only we could learn from the past, but apparently we can’t. As is said: Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. And Trumpty Dumpty’s spiel on his wall is so very ignorant.
Personally I’m thinking I should be buying stock in a ladder company. Or maybe setup a little store on the Mexican side called “AngryAndrew’s Rope and Ladder Emporium”. This is not to imply that I encourage illegal entry in any way. I don’t,
BUT
If Trump can get kickbacks by demanding the wall design use steel slats that can only be made by a particular Russian steel mill, so his buddy Roman Abramovich¹ can get “more richer,” then I figure it’s okay to sell a bit or rope, don’t you?
(¹Roman is principal of Evraz steel and a friend also of Putin)
Let’s look at some walls from history to see if we can learn anything.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF WALLS
1200 BC: Troy built a wall, but some clever Greeks hid in a hollow wooden horse parked out front, and the Troys just wheeled it inside and had a party. Then the Greeks popped out and went “Surprise!” And they all had a great time. Well, except the Troys who were soon mostly dead.
1300–1600: Great China Wall. A million workers died in its construction yet the Manchus still crossed it many times, obviously mistaking it for gym equipment. And after the fall of Beijing the wall was little help to China, except as a future tourist attraction. Oh, and a navigational aide for the Space Shuttle.
1928: The French Maginot line. After WWI, the French thought they’d outsmart the Germans by building a wall along the border. The Germans said “Huh. There’s a wall in front of us… hmm…” and after about three and a half seconds of military planning, the German army said “vell, let’s just go around zee side, ya? Günter, hold my bier.”
The French were like “Euh non! wait! You're not supposed to go that way! ... c’est la vie … at least Pierre has a great recipe for Schnitzel.”
1961: Berlin Wall. This wall was more to keep people IN rather than keep them out. Unlike most walls it was fairly effective, partly because it covered a small distance, partly because it was built by Germans who apparently are good at building railroads, bunkers, and walls, and partly (well, mostly) because the East Germans were also good at shooting at you with automatic rifles.
(Shockingly, actual peaceful diplomacy™ ended the need for that wall and it was demolished and sold on Ebay in little bits and pieces as a reminder that any wall can be reduced to rubble and made irrelevant.)
2003: Israel built the Wall of Apartheid, and it made commuting to work a real pain in the ass for thousands, and limited access to health care for a few hundred thousand needy people.
Nevertheless, suicide bombings did go down a bit. Though I’m sure that’s partly because suicide bombers have a very high attrition rate, as far as careers go. (On the plus side, they rarely collect unemployment benefits.)
2018: A fat sociopath that became president due to a glitch in the voting system ordered a wall on the Mexican border, because building a wall is a great distraction from solving actual problems, especially when you are getting kickbacks from the steel company supplying the slats.
The only problem of course is the legislative branch, as along with most of America they happen to think the proposed wall is a complete waste of tax dollars. This goes to show you that most Congress and most Americans are more intelligent than they get credit for.
EPILOGUE ON THE BENEFITS OF STUPIDITY
Of course those that support the wall and that support Trump have proven that even the woefully ignorant can blissfully plunge forward and repeat all the mistakes humans have made throughout recorded history.
But maybe they’re on to something? Consider that history frequently forgets those who do the “right” thing—unless they are assassinated and die before their time. History instructs us more about those that fuck-up beyond all belief. Those that are the absolute worst from the past are held up as the biggest examples. They are the most famous. So there you have it: Fame.
FAME … FAME … Fame … Fame … fame … fame
Just be the worst at something, and history will re-tell your legacy of idiotic misdeeds for generations to come, in the same way that UHF stations today play the same old episode of Gilligan’s Island over, and over, and over.
The End
~AngryAndrew
