The whole shutdown mess is much ado about nothing, except for the government employees who are not getting paid. Trump wants to waste billions on a southern border wall when the money could be spent much more productively. He also knows a wall is not the only answer to border security and that effective control of the border can be managed much less expensively. His initiation of the government shut down to put pressure on the Democrats has actually put more pressure on himself. Americans remember that only a few weeks ago, he declared that he would be happy to own the government shutdown if he did not get funding for the wall. But now that it is an ongoing problem that most of the country opposes, Trump is blaming it on the Democrats. One should also remember that during the campaign, he promised that Mexico was going to pay for the wall. What happened to that pledge? Is his base making any noise about that? Perhaps they forgot that element of his promise, or he did? He claims that the new NAFTA agreement is sufficient for Mexico to be paying for the wall. Perhaps he also has a bridge he wants to sell you.
Though Trump’s major concern at the moment is about the wall, he has forgotten all the middle-class government workers who are going without pay because of the shutdown. Many of these workers around the nation voted for Trump and he doesn’t seem to give a damn about the pain he is causing them over something that is not viable because it doesn’t make sense. Privately, a number of Senate Republicans also believe it is a waste of money, but are unwilling to cross Trump publically because of the political ramifications.
Trump said he wants the wall because he doesn’t want to look foolish. Yet he agreed to compromise measures to avoid the shutdown with less funding for border security a few weeks ago. Then he reversed himself when Rush Limbough, Laura Ingraham and other right-wing pundits said that he was a weakling. And he is a weakling because he reversed himself after pressure from these pundits. He was unable to stand up like a man and do what was right for the nation. Nancy Pelosi says that for Trump the wall is all about his masculinity. Compromise and end the shutdown.
America has a man as president who has no leadership qualities. He does not instill confidence with his policies because he is constantly changing them without any notice or reason. Instead of a leader, he is a follower of Fox and the right-wing pundits who seem to have veto power over any move that he makes. The wall is not going to get built unless some of his donors pay for it entirely and Trump has to get used to that idea. Besides, building the wall is not going to get rid of the 10-12 million undocumented immigrants estimated to currently be in America.
Also, in the last several years, there has been negative immigration, with an excess of migrants going home to Mexico, over and beyond the immigrants coming in. If the wall somehow did get erected, it would stop the immigration out of the country and keep more undocumented people here. This whole shutdown and Trump’s insistence at building a wall is all about optics and much ado about nothing.
Resurrecting Democracy
www.robertlevinebooks.com
Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020