AMERICA: BLINDFOLDED AND PLACED AGAINST THE WALL

During the holiday break, we traveled on a road paralleling THE BORDER WALL, a great scar on the landscape and a steel barrier being built as a tribute to Trump. It gives the middle finger to all those who choose freedom, morality, decency, and love. The Wall is a path of destruction 50 feet wide across pristine lands. A horrible manifestation of evil sprouting 26-30 feet high spears of steel spaced so most living creatures cannot pass; a ripping scar that can be seen from space; a poisonous creation that screams, “Trump is here, and I leave my mark for all time.”

In the year 2021, if the American Dream survives, it will be necessary to destroy the awful and destructive thing that is being gouged across North America. It is being built by men following a sick and disgusting president’s desire to name a great scar across the land after himself. It has been billed as a wall, but in fact, it is a terrible, visible gouge across deserts, valleys, and mountains with no purpose other than a statement of power and contempt for our neighbors, nature, and morality.

In a time of lies, thousands told by Trump, and hundreds told by those who serve him, this terrible scar across the southern boundary of the United States is supposedly needed to keep out people of the wrong skin color. Who are these people really? They are our fellow humans fleeing from deadly forces, many caused by U.S. intervention, exploitation, and manipulation of the governments they flee. These are people who seek the aid of others to help their families survive. They don’t come here to be kept or to feed off of us. Many want to return home to build governments of, by, and for their own people.

These tired and poor believe what is sadly becoming an American myth. They visualize a nation that conforms to the rule of law. Sadly, even laws to protect endangered species, private ownership of land, the rights of Native Americans, and the rights of families not to be torn apart or imprisoned, have been stomped on and buried in the muck stirred up by the construction of Trump’s tribute to himself.

Lies are told to hide deeper understandings. In reality, the drug trade is fostered by those who profit from and support the work of the cartels. The suffering and death related to the drug trade is fed by U.S. profiteers and consumers. The gun trade is fostered by guns exported from the U.S. It is our policies that must change. No wall can do that.

No photographs of the wall or of its path across America prepared me for the reality, the sheer horror of what I saw. This cannot be America’s future. We can and must stop this madness.