In The Outline of History (1920), H.G. Wells stated, “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”  True as that may be or may have been, I’m getting the feeling that at present we’re seeing a race between “image” and reality.

Regardless of rhetoric and belief, walls seldom work at keeping people in or out, and when they do work, it takes enormous effort and creates horrible tragedies… and in a short time, any wall fails.  History has shown this time and again.  That’s reality, but for the past month we’ve seen a political battle between the image of the wall as a security blanket and the reality of its impracticality.

Study after study has shown that societies work far better, are more stable, and progress more when economic inequality is lessened in a society, particularly the gap between the poorest and the very richest members of a society.  History has also shown that absolute income leveling does not work, and that functional societies need income gradients based on ability and effort.  Yet we have a world where the 26 richest men in the world [and they’re all men] control as much wealth as the poorest 48% (or 3.7 billion people), and even in the United States, the top one percent controls 40% of all the wealth, and it’s become harder and harder for people to move up from the income level of their parents, or, if they’re born rich, easier to stay rich than at any time in over a century, essentially since the time of the Robber Barons.  Yet all too many Americans hold to the image that government hinders income mobility, when in fact government law and policies over the last thirty years have largely benefited the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.  That’s the sad reality.

Then there’s the image of social media “bringing people together,” but if social media actually does that, then why do people feel more isolated than ever, and why are those individuals most addicted to social media the ones who feel the most isolated.  Once again, the image seems to be triumphing over reality.

Even as Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets are melting faster and faster, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, too many people hold to the image that the world is too vast for “mere” human activity to play any significant part in the ongoing global warming. And deniers cite a mere handful of scientists who deny global warming over the 99% who cite human activities as a significant cause. 

The United States is a far safer place for children than it’s ever been, yet American parents are more fearful for their children’s safety than ever before, largely because the media focuses on every sensational adverse event that happens to a child. In the same vein, millions of parents don’t have their children vaccinated, even when years of statistics show that the side-effects of vaccination are minuscule compared to the side-effects of the illnesses those vaccines prevent.  These parents either don’t know or ignore the fact that measles and whooping cough used to kill thousands of children annually, or that measles largely wiped out several Native American tribes and a huge percentage of Hawaiian islanders.

We have a President who has made thousands of false statements over the past two years, and yet something like 38% of the people still believe him.

So why do images grasp so many of us so firmly that we cannot see reality?

These days, there’s a lot of talk about the polarization of political views, which is reflected in the current stand-off between the Republican Senate/President Trump and the House Democratic leadership.  As always, however, what occurs in Washington is a reflection of what’s happening everywhere in the nation.

One of the facets of this polarization is, from what I’ve observed, a much greater tendency for each side to objectify the other side by insisting that anyone who doesn’t agree fully with them on various “hot-button” issues must be a card-carrying extremist on the other side.

So… if I say that the ultra-feminists are carrying political correctness to absurd extremes, which I believe they are (since I believe that they should have concentrated on getting economic and political power and equality first and foremost), I risk being called a toxic male, or at best one who is hopelessly out of touch. If I say that black movements such as Black Lives Matter have not only called attention to young blacks unjustly killed, which has happened far too often, but also gone overboard and exalted black street punks/minor criminals into martyrs, which they have, then I’m told that I have no understanding of minority rights and am a white privileged racist.

If I point out to my rancher/farmer acquaintances that they can’t keep mining the groundwater in the high desert area where we live or that there’s too much overgrazing on federal lands, I’m immediately dismissed as a left-wing environmentalist who doesn’t understand and wants to destroy their family heritage. Likewise, if I point out that the BLM has mismanaged the handling of a host of issues, from wild horses to collecting grazing fees, I’m called part of the right-wing rape-the-land advocates.

If I point out that the majority of “hate” groups in the U.S.  are by far mostly composed of far right extremists, which is documented, and if I don’t publicly condemn the comparatively few extreme leftist outbreaks, which I tend not to do because the far-right is doing that quite extensively, and I really don’t want to associate myself with them on that, then I’m labelled as an extreme leftist.

If I point out that the current administration’s idea of building a wall is insane, impractical, and wasteful, then I’m a far left liberal who wants to turn the country over to greedy criminal immigrants who will destroy “our way” of life, despite all the facts to the contrary, or the fact that I’ve been vocal about the need for immigration law reform.   

As I’ve repeatedly pointed out in my blogs, facts have become irrelevant.  Only image and emotion matter any more.  Each side picks the facts that support its views, and their images, and categorizes and objectifies anyone who doesn’t agree as the enemy. 

And those of us in the middle are becoming fewer and fewer, because we don’t agree fully with either “side,” and that means both sides view us as the enemy.

And then people wonder why there aren’t any compromises.

The other day I was reading a fantasy novel that had been recommended to me by someone whose judgment I trust.  I had to force myself to finish it.  It wasn’t that the technical aspect of the writing was bad.  The writer has a good command of mechanics and style.  It wasn’t that the plot was trite; it wasn’t.  The concept of the magic was good, and it seamlessly fused magic and post-Renaissance/early industrial-level technology.

So why did I have so much trouble finishing the book?

The plot reminded me of the worst in Baroque music, over-ornamented and excessively twisted and complex.  Now, I know… lots of readers like those kinds of books and their plots.  I’m not one of them, and probably the reason why is because I spent too much time in Washington, D.C., and national politics.

To put it bluntly, involuted and convoluted schemes don’t usually work in real life.  First is the simple problem that not even three people can keep a secret very long, let alone the number required to orchestrate a complex conspiracy.  Second, the more moving parts anything has, especially if those moving parts are people, the greater the chance that something will go wrong, in fact, that many things will go wrong.

Then there’s the problem that when things get really ornately complex, more gimmicks or gadgets are needed, especially if there’s an evil genius or power that wants to make people act against their self-interest (which there is in this book), and that’s also not the way matters work in real life.  People do shady things out of greed, the lust for power or sex, or because it gives them a twisted kick.  It’s dreadfully straight-forward.  The twists in life come from the interaction of comparatively direct motivations that don’t allow everyone to get what they want.

When an author over-complexifies, so to speak, he or she loses me.  Now, that’s just me.  I don’t dislike complexity, but when I write, I want the complexity to come out of the interaction of human motives and drives.

Maybe that’s why I also generally prefer Classical or Romantic period music, but I say generally, because far from all Baroque music is over-ornamented, unlike Baroque-plot books.

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.