If people were logical, there wouldn’t even be an issue over the wall. But people are emotional, and their emotions are tied into images.

For Trump and his supporters, the wall is an image of strength and protection against the hordes of immigrants that threaten their vision of America. It doesn’t even occur to them that for most Americans and much of the free world, walls connote a different kind of power and domination, the kind represented by the Berlin Wall and even the Great Wall of China, where between 400,000 and two million people [depending on the historian] died building various iterations of that wall, and which at one point required a million men to defend and maintain it, vainly as it turned out.

Next, there’s the problem with the image of immigrants.  Despite the fact that every single person in the United States, including Native Americans [they just came first], is either an immigrant or the descendent of immigrants, most of them poor, Trump and his wall supporters possess the image of immigrants as greedy and criminal, while most of those who oppose the wall hold to the positive idea of the United States as a land of opportunity for immigrants.

Then, there’s the larger image problem.  Exactly what would building a massive concrete barrier say about the United States?  Would it say that we’re a free and open land?  What kind of power would that convey?  Based on the history of walls and who built them and for what reasons, I’d say that such a wall conveys the idea of dominating great power that places security above all else, a power that will trample human rights for the sake of security, and certainly that’s what we’re seeing with the way the current administration is dealing with immigrants and their children.

What’s one of the most disturbing aspects of this confrontation is that neither side has directly addressed the simple issue of what such a wall says about us as a people, or to what lengths those who want to build that wall will go to obtain that security.

As for whether such a wall would even provide such security, I’ll defer to General George Patton who said, “Fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity.  If mountain ranges and oceans can be overcome, anything made by man can be overcome.”

Regardless of how the shut-down turns out, the Democratic Party risks losing its majority status in the next election for one simple reason.

A majority of the country believes that there is an immigration problem.  While I’m obviously no fan of the President, and while the immigration situation was not the national emergency or crisis Trump has turned it into, there is an immigration problem.

As many people have pointed out, we’re making it harder and harder for the kind of skilled and educated immigrants we can use to actually immigrate here.  We’re making it harder and harder for foreign students who get their advanced degrees to stay here and work.

We allow hundreds of thousands of people to come as students or tourists…and stay past their education or visas… and then almost randomly, with no real program, abruptly deport a comparative handful, often breaking up families, and leaving legal children without a parent.

We have a need for low skilled workers to do grubby jobs.  But rather than have a program for them, as we once did, now illegals do some of the work, legal immigrants do some, and some doesn’t get done, and those who do it are often subject to brutal conditions because so much is under the table.

There aren’t enough immigration judges or other personnel… and all that I’ve mentioned doesn’t come close to covering the problems.

Now… unlike the Democrats, Trump has addressed the problem and proposed a solution.  In my opinion, as most who read this blog know, it’s a lousy and wasteful solution that doesn’t really do anything that will get to the roots of the problem, but it’s a solution.

In all the Democratic rhetoric, I haven’t heard one single word about what their solution might be to the problem, only that what Trump has proposed is wrong.  I agree.  What he’s done is wrong and also won’t really solve the problem.

But he’s trying to address it.

The Democrats are pretending it’s not a problem; that it will go away if we continue immigration as we did before.  It won’t.  Given the awful conditions in too many Latin American countries, this problem isn’t going away.

So… Democrats, what’s your plan… besides saying “No” to Trump?

An old political consultant I respected greatly once said, “You can’t beat anything with nothing.”  And right now, the Democrats have exactly nothing.

We don’t have a national emergency.  We soon will, because that’s exactly what Trump has planned. It’s all part of a grand scheme that just might work. Consider the developments to date. 

First, Trump has been conducting rallies all over the United States for the past two years, emphasizing the dangers of immigration and the need for the wall, to the point that now 87% of all Republicans believe it’s necessary.  The facts that show it’s unnecessary, wasteful, and counterproductive don’t matter to the success of the Evil Genius’s plan. All that matters is that the overwhelming majority of Republicans believe that immigrants are an immediate threat to the U.S. and that the wall must be built.  That means that very few Republicans in Congress can afford to oppose Trump.

The Democrats have discovered that Trump isn’t interesting in bargaining or compromise.  But their problem is that their base is composed of minorities, educated white women, and some liberal white males, all of whom are vitally interested in civil and gender rights and environmental protection.  The Trump administration has stepped up deportations to an all-time high and has been attempting to cut back the rights of immigrants, legal and illegal, to remove civil rights protections, to make voter registration and voting more difficult for the poor and disadvantaged, and to nullify environmental protections which benefit largely the poorer segments of society.  Given the Trump administration’s record in these issues, they rightly fear that any compromise will just enhance Trump’s power. Also, if they give in on the wall funding, then Trump will spend the next two years tweeting that “even the Democrats knew I was right.  They funded the wall.”  

Second, Trump has no intention of allowing Congress to reach a compromise on the wall issue.  When the Congressional leadership reached an agreement on $1.6 billion on border security, a number Trump said he’d approve, once the bill was passed, Trump rejected it.  Vice President Pence then said Trump would go for $2.5 billion, and the leadership started to put together that bill, when Trump then declared that wasn’t acceptable.  Now, Trump is demanded $5.7 billion for the wall.  But he’s also saying that it’s “up to the parties.”   He’s positioning himself so that neither side can politically afford to compromise, and when everything breaks down, he can claim that the system has failed and he needs emergency powers.

While not all of the federal government is shut down, Homeland Security cannot pay its employees, and they’re a large element of border and transportation security.  The now unpaid TSA agents are already calling in “sick” in high numbers, and since they’re certainly among the 80% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, this problem will worsen, as will the stress and strain among the other near-million or so federal employees not being paid.

As a result, sooner or later there will be some sort of border of immigration incident.  Trump will use that incident to point out the failure of Congress to address this “vital national security issue,” ignoring the fact that he’s the one who created the issue, and will push for a national state of emergency.  If that doesn’t do it, the next incident will.

Sooner or later, as the Trump administration tightens controls and increases deportations, including the child-age legal citizens of illegal immigrants [which reportedly has already begun to happen], there will be demonstrations against the administration.  The administration will claim that the demonstrations are fomented by foreign agents [as they have already claimed at times] and will restrict civil rights more.  The actual process will take longer and have more steps, but the result will be the same.

In short, if Congress refuses to act with veto-proof legislation, Trump will continue to fan the flames until he gains full emergency powers over government.

Don’t tell me It Can’t Happen Here.  It is happening.  The only question is whether we do something about it and demand our legislators cut Trump out of government funding, which they can do.

When Trump learned that the House of Representatives and the Democratic minority in the Senate were willing to give him more border security funding, but no wall or solid steel fence, he walked out of the meeting, saying “Bye-bye.”

He talks about the need to protect Americans, but every day that the partial government shut-down continues, far more Americans are harmed than any possible protection than could be obtained from a concrete wall or solid steel fence.   The National Parks are taking a beating that will require millions to repair and clean up.  Tax refunds are threatened.  Federal contract workers will never get paid for the last three weeks.

No matter what Trump says, none of that really matters to him. He wants that wall because he campaigned on it, and he wants his way.  He wants to proof he’s boss.  And since he can’t say “You’re fired,” to Congress, this is the next best thing for him.

It doesn’t matter in the slightest to him that there are better and more effective ways to deal with the flow of refugees.  It doesn’t matter how many American citizens suffer.  It doesn’t matter than the wall would be a five billion dollar fiasco that would simply channel would-be illegal immigrants into other ways to get into the U.S.  It doesn’t matter that we’re getting more illegal immigrants by far by other ways than across the Mexican border.

Now…the Democrats could turn up the pressure on this issue by saying that, while a wall won’t work and sends the wrong message, there is a need for more border security and that they’d support more funding – with the proviso that none of it goes to a wall.

Or Trump could easily “win” by saying, “Okay, you’re right.  The wall won’t work the way I thought, but that means we need to spend more on other ways to stop illegal immigration. Give me five billion, with solid language that says it can’t be spent on a wall or a solid steel fence.”

 That way, he’d put the Democrats in the corner.  But he’s too much of a four-year-old in temper tantrum outlook to do that.  And so, Americans and would-be migrants will all continue to suffer, and if Congress does cave and he gets wall funding, they’ll have suffered, and all the money spent on the wall will be essentially wasted.

So much for the great deal-maker and temper tantrums in politics.

The other day, I ran across a reader review of one of my books, where the reader downgraded it because it had the “least action” of any book in the series, as if his prime criterion for excellence was violent action.  My first reaction was why he bothered to read my books at all, and my second was that the book in question had more than a little “action,” but no great and endless battle scenes.  And that led to my third thought, which was about the current administration.

With all the emphasis on “the wall” and the totally unfounded idea that illegal immigrants will pose a great and violent threat, and the heralding of the “triumph” over ISIS in Syria, as well as the postured threats and tariff wars, most people aren’t seeing the “real action,” just as that reader didn’t.

As I’ve noted earlier, the Mexican border isn’t the biggest problem with illegal immigrants; and, overall, illegal immigrants are actually paying more in taxes than they’re getting in benefits.  At the same time, green cards are being denied to immigrants with permanent legal status here – yes, you can stay, for now, and until we take away more rights, but you can’t legally work here.  That forces legal immigrants to work illegally if they want to stay alive, and if they’re caught working illegally, then they can be deported…  not only that, but the number of illegal, and some legal immigrants being deported is growing. 

But “the wall” dominates the news. 

In the meantime, across the board, environmental protections are being dialed back administratively, effectively worsening air quality and endangering health. The current administration is continuing to use administrative measures to weaken health care insurance, while administrative decisions are effectively lengthening the protections against competition for brand-name drugs, thus ensuring higher drug prices for longer, and higher health care costs.

Across the entire economy, a few large corporations are gaining market strangleholds, while Congress looks the other way, and the President insists on keeping part of the government shut down until he gets his way.

Our national transportation system continues to erode, and our electric power distribution system is a disaster waiting to happen, but the President claims victory against ISIS in Syria while the DOD secretary resigns, and everyone is up in arms as the President back-pedals on withdrawing troops from Syria.

And Congress, and most Americans, focus on the distractions, while missing all too much of the “real” action, just like that clueless reader.