The Border Boondoggle Must End

I skipped Stormy doing the laundry to watch El Cheeto do his usual best to divide and conquer an already divided nation–all for a wall.

What most Americans don’t realize is the “humanitarian” crisis he kept mentioning has nothing to do with mothers and children escaping violence and poverty in Central America. He seems to care more about the sensibilities of his racist base and anyone else who feels victimized by the mere sight of brown people.

Some were predicting lie after lie by Trump, and I haven’t had time to go over the numbers he spouted, nor do I want to. Whether one fact-checks Trump or not, he said it before a national audience and no corrective measure will cause a sudden change of heart in the bigots who support him. Standing against everything he is about is about the only thing that will work, in my opinion.

The Democratic response left much to be desired. Standing against the wall is fine and dandy, but funneling more money into the border boondoggle is not a solution when we throw money at one part of system (enforcement gadgets) but ignore the rest of the system (immigration). Ultimately, all Pelosi and Schumer presented was just another “tough talk” tactic to appease anti-immigrant hardliners to re-open the government and some pro-migrant platitudes from eight years ago. We’ll see how this works out.

Democrats are missing out on a real opportunity to change the conversation toward one that discusses fixing the system. Instead, Democrats want to keep funding a broken system in which human rights are violated on a daily basis; captured children have died; which continues funding baby jail contractors; and keeps the border militarized, in exchange for Trump backing down on a wall. Appeasing evil doesn’t sound workable to me, and Trump is definitely evil.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sure as hell has the right idea.