Commentary: ‘Border Wall’ need is built on Trump’s fear-mongering lies

DOUGLAS, Ariz. (March 14, 2009) Seabees assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalions (NMCB) 133 and NMCB-14 construct a 1,500 foot-long concrete-lined drainage ditch and a 10 foot-high wall to increase security along the U.S. and Mexico border in Douglas, Ariz. Builder 3rd Class Petty Officer Ian Burkhard in foreground. (U.S. Navy photo by Steelworker 1st Class Matthew Tyson/Released)

To deny the worker his wages is to do evil in the world.

When the stated premise of a fix is a lie, you have to look for the ulterior motive.

We now have extensive reporting and facts providing evidence that there is not an emergency need for a wall on our southern border:

• Illegal crossings continue to hover at a 20-year low that has persisted for several years and no rising trend in sight
• Justice Department report that more than 90 percent of illegal drugs come in through ports of entry and airports
• illegal immigrants are responsible for a few percentage points of the murders, rapes and other violent crimes committed by their peers who are natural-born citizens,
• Most illegal immigrants are over-stays from legal visas
• Seeking asylum is NOT illegal immigration – it is protected by international treaty.

This leaves no justifications for a border wall that are honest or factual. Not to mention the fact that an actual border wall would require the taking of land from private citizens (not a conservative value), would damage wildlife populations and impair Border Patrol surveillance efforts. Add to that, $5.6 billion would not even begin to complete a border wall – it’s a sham. According to MIT engineers, the wall would cost $31.2 billion. You cannot just yell “fake news” and pretend that alternative facts are equal – “subjective truth” is NOT a conservative value.

But the final question remains: Why didn’t the president seek wall funding when control of all of Congress was with his team? Why is this a crisis now that there are Democrats to blame?

What remains  is to look for other, real reasons for inventing a crisis; is it base racism or a distraction from real problems threatening our country, like the fact that our president might be an actual Russian agent, that many Republican members of Congress received Russian money laundered through the NRA and some apparently knew and were okay with that? This is a very real nationwide crisis: this government shutdown the president orchestrated and Republican Senate leadership is complicit in prolonging. Our president himself said he would not blame Democratic leaders for the shutdown, and I’m pretty sure Congress could override a presidential veto if they had the backbone to stand up to him.

Now the man in the White House wants to force another 50,000 federal workers back to slave labor with no pay so that the citizens don’t feel the effects of a shutdown in their tax returns? I say the people should feel the pain. About 800,000 of the 1.8 million federal workers are going without a paycheck, the economy is suffering, very real services are being denied industries that depend on federal services, approvals and inspections. Of those, 420,000 are being forced to work with no pay and our nation is shamed by this evil. And the failure to fund our government should not be a painless experience for our nation. It’s a shame that our Republican leadership has spent decades demonizing the federal workforce and bureaucrats to the point that those in Congress are numb to the evil of denying them pay while forcing them to work.

This is not a partisan crisis, this is a moral crisis. The Republican party leadership (not the rank and file voters – like members of a cult, they are not as guilty of the sins of their cult leaders) has abandoned morality and country in favor of party-first slash and burn politics.

This is not about politics. This shutdown is immoral and those who prolong it sin against God.

“Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” – James Chapter 5

Lest you think this a small thing, earlier in the Chapter, James lays out the full vitriol of God’s wrath in payment for this sin:

“Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

“Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten.

“Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days.

“You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.”

To those who sit by and excuse or justify these actions, to the Pentecostals who support this president, it is not Trump of whom the angels sing: “And the government shall be upon his shoulders.” You who voted for him bear in the sins now being committed. You knowingly and willingly elected a bully, a liar, a fornicator and self-confessed assaulter of women, led by the lies and half-truths of the den of thieves who have appointed themselves prophets of the Republican cult: Fox News, Hannity, Limbaugh, Ingram and all of the false prophets of Christianity who have supported these morally bankrupt politicians. They have allowed the Democratic party to assume the mantle of the morally (or at least ethically) correct and have abandoned their principles of fiscal conservatism, justice, and the moral high ground. Do not let your future or the nation you profess to love continue to be tied to the base evil that has taken hold of your party.

Conservative-Leaning Sources Explaining the Uselessness of Trump’s Wall (as reported in Medium)

• The Cato Institute: “Why the Wall Won’t Work”
• Former Reagan staffer and Tea-Party liaison Donna Wiesner Keene: “The Conservative Case Against a Border Fence” published by U.S. News & World Report.
• The Chicago Tribune (a conservative-leaning paper): “Trump’s Wall Is Performance Art, Not Border Security”
• National Review (conservative magazine): “Trump’s Border Wall Plan Is Ridiculous on Its Face”

Additional Sources

• Harvard Business Review (business-oriented): “A Wall Won’t Secure the U.S.-Mexico Border, but Economic Policy Could”
• Nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI): “Borders and Walls: Do Barriers Deter Unauthorized Migration?”