A new Congress, a new year, and a rough slide
into more government, and specifically
executive, mismanagement and incompetence.
Trump has taken a significant brunt of the
disapproval for the shutdown — fighting for
a wall that most people consider not to be a
priority.
Even so, it’s worth examining the reasoning
behind the project, a project which has become
mostly emblematic of Trump’s style: excessive, showy, and ultimately, poorly thought out
and ineffective.
Immigration has been a considerable talking
point for Republican party members in the
past years, but no one has been as extreme and
as reactionary as Trump. George Bush, in his
speech on immigration, stated “the vast majority of illegal immigrants are decent people
who work hard, support their families, practice
their faith, and lead responsible lives”. There
has been a violent increase, then, in the harshness of rhetoric shown by the Right on the
issue of immigration. This increase is by and
large due to Trump, and specifically his bombastic style.
Trump, far from being patient and contemplative, and far from even thinking, likes to
say what not only sounds good, but appeals to
people. Immigrants aren’t the problem. That’s
why the rhetoric of Bush seems so tame by
today’s standards: illegal immigrants commit
less crime, per capita, then native born citizens
do.
The Republicans of the Bush-era knew this, or
at least had a sense of this, and so they
approached the immigration problem from a
different angle: they discussed order, appealing
to sovereignty and the rule of law. Illegal immigration was problematic primarily because
it was illegal. Whether or not one considers
this fundamentally veiled racism, it is far from
Trump’s openly racist and openly fear-mongering rhetoric.
So the reasoning behind the wall does not follow logically from previous Republican
rhetoric. Trump’s position on illegal immigration, while similar to the Republican’s, is a
massive regressive leap back. It just happened
that Trump came when America was particularly ripe for his rhetoric, and willing to accept
his style.
Obviously, the wall is not worthwhile. There
was an undue amount of stress put upon
federal workers and their families. The wall is
an expensive vanity project, at the end of the
day. The effectiveness of it is doubtful — you
can’t wall off planes, you can’t wall off water.
A wall can always be climbed. But for white
Trump loving Americans it affirms something
important — that their country is their own,
that they have a place where they belong, a
place they can call home. And if that requires
hate, and racism, and separating families, to
Trump supporters that seems like a worthwhile
sacrifice.