Mending wall

Guest post by Capt. Fogg

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall

-- Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"

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But whatever that thing is, it is not the xenophobes who want to make hideous the wild and beautiful Rio Grande by building an iron curtain that is supposed to maintain the ethnic and racial purity of the United States. So it is that Lord Bush did sign a decree called the Secure Fence Act that authorizes congress to build one of those purportedly unlovable edifices on our southern border. Of course, the proposal falls far short of the Great Wall of China, a far more expensive and extensive creation that also didn't work to keep out the Mongols. Of course, those neighbors to the north had other things on their mind than picking fruit and mending roofs and mowing lawns, but I digress.

It doesn't actually matter that the proposed 700-mile fence can be walked around rather than climbed over or tunneled under, since it's not going to be built and since other legislation passed almost simultaneously assures that the money will go toward other Republican projects. "Let’s not and say we did" usually works well for the GOP.

The theme of Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" is that good fences don't really make good neighbors: the forces of nature bring down walls and nature intends for people not to be fenced in against each other. Whether it's true or partially true or not true at all, the Republicans aren't poets and the Republicans don't actually care about walls or immigration or neighborly relations or the plight of the common man. What they wanted and what they got is short-term credibility with the far right and another long-term source of funds to be diverted for their benefit.