Trump's Sacrifice

In the curious case of Donald Trump’s fight with Khizr Khan, the Muslim American who lost a son in the Iraq War, Trump keeps digging in his heels, and digging himself deeper into a hole of nastiness.

In response to Mr. Khan’s assertion, in his passionate speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, that Trump has “sacrificed nothing and no one” for America, Trump tried to claim that his hard work and “tremendous success” in building his business was somehow comparable to giving the life of your son.

Who knew that making tons of money could be both fabulous and a horrible misfortune. Should the US bestow a medal on Trump for his brave, opulent sacrifice? Something in the shape of a gold-plated toilet fixture perhaps?

Anyway, in his supreme cluelessness Trump has completely blown his response to the Khans. He’s shown no understanding, no empathy, no magnanimity. He has, however, shown his true character.

Or maybe not entirely. I suspect Donald Trump isn’t saying what he really thinks about the whole thing. I suspect that, even as uninhibited and unfiltered as he normally is, maybe in this case he understands enough to know he can’t express the one thing that, deep down inside, he truly feels about the Khans losing a son while his own family remains untouched by war.

This is what I imagine Trump really thinks in his heart of hearts:

“Too bad for you, Khizr Khan, but only chumps allow their children to go off and fight in a stupid, useless war. And I, Donald J. Trump, am no chump. You lose, I win. I always win.” 

National Colors

On Sunday, I went running in the nearby woods with my wife, only the second time since last summer. 

When I say “running”, I mean “jogging”, at a pace that would barely qualify as a brisk walk, until my lungs can’t stand it anymore and I am forced to walk for a bit until I can manage to “run” again, all the while my wife, just to keep her pulse up, runs (actual runs) back and forth past me, like a deft crow again and again swooping past a slow gliding hawk.

She likes the company, I suppose, though I am by no means the ideal running companion.

This half-an-hour of cardiovascular hell was nicely timed to finish just as Finland’s latest matchup in the World Hockey Championship got underway, although I had to spend the first ten minutes of the game recovering on the porch collapsed in our Adirondack chair before I could come in to watch.

When I did, I immediately started rooting for the wrong team. I cursed when an aggressive attack by some strong skaters failed to score against…Finland. What? Huh? 

Credit: realismadder

It took me a few moments to realize it wasn’t the Slovakian goalie who was working mightily in front of the goal to keep the puck from going in. It was the Finnish. I was confused, and not only because my senses were dulled by my near-death experience on the running path.

The reason for my mistake was the color of their jerseys. On the TV screen before me were two teams whizzing over the ice at supersonic speeds, one in white jerseys, one in blue, both national colors of Finland. I’m somehow more used to Finland wearing white jerseys, but in this game the team wearing white was Slovakia, a country which shares Finland's national colors, in addition to one other, namely red. As in red, white and blue. On closer inspection, I could make out a small red stripe on Slovakia’s jerseys, hardly noticeable.

Of course, both teams have the right to wear the colors of blue or white on their uniforms. Still, with three colors to choose from, unlike Finland, I’m curious why Slovakia didn’t use red uniforms instead. Why use a color that could also be used by the opposing team when you have another color all your own? (And, yes, I do have too much time on my hands.)

I’ve noticed the same when Finland plays the USA. I don’t recall Team USA charging out on the ice in mostly-red jerseys. I think they’re usually blue.

Anyway, this got me thinking about why the colors red, white and blue are used by so many countries, some 30 in fact, including such diverse nations as Chile, Taiwan, France, or for that matter, Cuba, Russia, and North Korea.

The list also includes many of the Commonwealth nations such as Australia and New Zealand (neither of which, I’m told, is an exceptional powerhouse in ice hockey), nations that apparently came to use the red, white and blue national colors in the same way as America did – they adopted them from the Mother Country.

It’s kind of funny when you think about it. It appears the leaders of the American Revolution weren’t so revolutionary when it came to colors. They could have broken with the past completely and created an entirely new color scheme for a completely new nation, say, orange, green and yellow. Instead, while they did go for a radically different flag design, they retained the old colors of the hated enemy Britain. Go figure.

The Bolsheviks did much better. Seizing control of the Russian government in the October Revolution and installing a government of “workers, solider and peasants”, the followers of Lenin tossed the historic red-white-blue flag of Tsarist Russia onto the dustbin of history.

To replace it, they created, in the vein of centuries-old socialist tradition, a simple red flag, with some tasteful Communist symbols in yellow -- the flag of the Soviet Union. It was a clear signal that this was no longer your dedushka’s Russia. Of course, that didn’t last.

I can’t finish without making a snarky observation about some other anti-establishment political hijinks that are much more recent. The most unavoidable symbol of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been his “Make America Great Again” cap. Trump, no slouch when it comes to marketing and branding, dreamed up this Average Joe headwear early in his run for the White House as a way to spread his insipid campaign slogan.

The caps seem to come in only two colors, red and white, no blue. (Okay, there’s also a camouflage version, but that’s just seems to be an afterthought.) The omission of blue has led someone in the media, maybe John Oliver or just some random Internet wag, to speculate that Trump is confused in thinking that he’s running for president of Canada. Or Japan. Or some other red-and-white country. Poland, maybe? Indonesia?

Why no blue? Does Trump have something against blue states, perhaps? Could be. Or maybe Trump, in a rush to cash in on a campaign that was never meant to last, simply forgot about the color blue when ordering up a consignment of chauvinistic merchandizing. I doubt we’ll ever know.

One quick aside: a Finnish correspondent in the US has reported that he was unable to order a Trump cap for himself because he is a foreigner. That seems to be true, as customers aren’t “buying” a cap, but rather “contributing” to a campaign (for which they get a cap), something that only citizens or legal residents can do.

Illegal residents are, therefore, excluded from buying a Trump cap of their very own. Presumably Muslims, as such, still can.

I can’t imagine either one of those groups would want to anyway. I know I wouldn’t. 

Trump in his cap, showing his colors (no blue!).
Photo: Gage Skidmore

Jan from Chattanooga

In a recent version of Slate’s excellent Trumpcast podcast, the host Jacob Weisberg interviewed a listener, Jan from Chattanooga, about why he supports Donald Trump. It was interesting to hear Jan’s views. 

Here’s what struck me the most about what he had to say.

1. Jan is angry about the bank bailouts of 2008. He thinks that Trump might have done the bailouts just the same, “for the good of the country”, but that Trump would have been able to leverage more government “oversight” of the banks.

2. Jan is concerned about illegal immigration and wants it under control. At the same time, he isn’t sure that the wall Trump wants to build is a good thing (and doesn’t actually believe Trump will build it).

3. Jan doesn’t agree with Trump’s idea of deporting 12 million illegal aliens. Instead, he thinks law-abiding illegal immigrants already in the US should be “given some way to become Americans, or at least have a legal working status”

4. Jan isn’t worried that Trump is now starting to take campaign contributions, because he trusts that Trump won’t allow himself to be “owned” by anybody politically.

On point 1, Jan could almost be a Sanders supporter. On points 2 and 3, he rejects two of Trump’s major policies. He’s not in favor of “the wall” and is in favor of amnesty. On point 4, he seems to trust Trump not to be corruptible for no other reason than he’s Trump, or rich, or something.

Otherwise, the main reason he supports Trump is his promise to stop US jobs from going overseas. There again, he sounds to me like a Sanders supporter.

All that said, I don’t see why Jan, who sounds like an intelligent guy, would support Trump over one of the more moderate GOP candidates, or even Bernie Sanders. I don’t get it.

The Great Wall of Trump

I have a minor, geeky point to make about the mythical wall that Donald Trump seems to believe he can build along the border with Mexico.

Put aside the huge cost of building and patrolling such a wall, independently estimated to be at least $25 billion just for the construction (and rest assured, Mexico will NOT pay for it). There’s also the actual geography of the border to consider.

One geographic reality of the Trump Wall in particular seems to me likely to force the US to effectively give up control of some its territory for long stretches of the border. I’m talking here about the Rio Grande.

I have crossed the US-Mexican border only a couple of times in my life. One of these was at the Boquillas crossing on the Rio Grande, the river that for some 1200 miles (1930 kilometers) forms America’s southern border. The river, in fact, makes up almost two-thirds of the total length of that border.

At the time (1985), Boquillas was an “informal” border crossing, way off the beaten track. My future wife and I happened upon it during a pre-Christmas get-away to Big Bend National Park, a national treasure nestled, you might say, in that large “S-shape” on the bottom of Texas where the Rio Grande curves north after flowing southeastwardly from El Paso. In other words, the “Big Bend”.

The pueblo of Boquillas del Carmen in the distance, as seen from the US. 

Photo: Texas.pics 

Big Bend, by the way is an amazing park, an outstanding place to visit, especially if you enjoy stark desert landscapes far from civilization. We loved it there. We did small day hikes, along the river and in the Chisos Mountains. We spotted roadrunners, coyotes and foxes near the campgrounds. I can’t remember if we saw any snakes, but no doubt they were nearby. We visited hot springs. And we got familiar with the river that forms the southern edge of both the park and the nation.

Along the park’s boundary, the Rio Grande is mostly flat and placid, and only about a hundred feet across. It cuts through at least three major canyons, but the part we saw mostly occupied a narrow flood plain between low banks of limestone. From our campsite at Rio Grande Village, we could hear roosters crowing from across the river. From riverside trails, we could see cattle wandering in and out of canebrakes on the opposite shore. And from the Boquillas Crossing, we made a short, undocumented visit to the other side.

This border crossing lay at the end of short unpaved road that reaches the river just upstream from the Mexican hamlet of Boquillas del Carmen. In the graveled riverside parking lot sat just a car or two, with a few enterprising local men lounging on the hoods. We paid one of them a couple of dollars to paddle us across the river -- and the US border -- in an aluminum johnboat. It took only a minute or two. Once on the other side, we could have paid a couple of more dollars to ride burros to the village about a mile away, but we chose to go along the rough road into town on foot.

It was the quintessential dusty one-street town. We looked around, had a relaxing lunch of tacos and cold beer under a breezy awning. We bought a couple of simple figurines carved from green onyx as souvenirs. I don’t recall seeing any other gringos. After a couple of hours maybe, we returned across the river, back to the United States.

Crossing the border at Boquillas was quasi-legal and essentially unregulated before 9/11, providing probably the main source of income for Boquillas del Carmen’s 300-odd residents. After the fall of the Twin Towers shook America’s sense of security to its core, this faraway river crossing was shut down. It was reopened in 2013, but now as an official, though unstaffed, Port of Entry with high-tech kiosks allowing visitors from Mexico to connect remotely to distant immigration officials. Its laid-back nature has been, it would seem, changed forever.

I’ve been recently reminded of Boquillas, and our long-ago crossing there, by all this talk of Trump’s Wall. Which brings me (finally) to my geeky point:  where exactly along the Rio Grande does Mr. Trump intend to locate his magnificent wall.

I assume the official border follows the middle of the river. And, I’m guessing that, for all kinds of engineering and hydrological reasons, you can’t erect a YUGE concrete wall smack down in the middle of a 1200-mile waterway.

Obviously, the wall has to be built on shore. On the American side, of course. I feel certain Mexico would not allow it on its side.

I also have a feeling it’s not practical to place a wall right on the water’s edge, which might vary anyway with spring floods, etc. That means the wall would have to be set back some distance from the shore, say two- to three-hundred feet. Depending on the local geography, an even wider buffer zone might be needed.

Rio Grande, international border on the edge of Big Bend National Park.

Photo: Glysiak

To me, this strip of land between the wall and the river would become a no-man’s land, mostly off limits for ordinary Americans, but accessible to anyone from the Mexican side to come and go as they please. The wall would replace the river as a de facto border.

Access to the river would be limited by the location of gates or portals built into in the wall. Maybe most of these would be only for Border Patrol agents to pass through. Most likely, only a few would be open for ordinary Americans.

In other words, only Americans with the right documentation could access the river at official border crossings (no undocumented Yankees fishing on the Rio Grande!). This would leave miles and miles of the Rio Grande difficult to reach for locals and tourists. It would greatly complicate commercial rafting operators, not to mention anyone else who wanted to have fun on the river.

And then there are the reservoirs. The Rio Grande is impounded by two dams on the US-Mexican border, creating the 65,000-acre Lake Amistad (ironic name, there) and the 84,000-acre Falcon Reservoir. These large bodies of water straddling the border are understandably popular with fishermen and other recreationists.

I can only assume that Trump’s Wall would have to be constructed along the entire long, convoluted shores of these lakes, essentially sealing these enjoyable waters off from easy access. To Americans, that is.

I doubt the average bass fisherman in Texas setting out to launch his boat at the Rough Canyon ramp, some ten miles north of the Mexican half of Lake Amistad, nowadays has to remember to bring along his passport (which 80% of Americans don’t have anyway). After Trump’s Wall goes up, he will.

Otherwise, how can he, as an American, be allowed back into the States after a day of fishing on one of Texas’ biggest lakes? Ironic, isn’t?

A wayward gringo enjoying a cerveza in Boquillas del Carmen.

Net Stupidity – The Mexican Wall Edition

The Internet meme below has recently popped up in my Facebook feed. As you can see, it shows a fence, topped with what looks like razor-wire, identified as “Mexico’s Southern Border”.

The point the meme is trying to make (in mostly fluent English) is that Americans should not be demonized for wanting a big-ass wall on the border with Mexico – the kind of wall that Donald Trump can’t stop talking about – since Mexico protects its own southern border with a “full border fenceline” complete with “barbed wire, armed guards, and towers”. In other words, the fence in the photo.

I can’t say I’m familiar with the Mexican-Guatemalan border, but the photo didn’t quite look right to me. You might expect a lusher, tropical look to the surroundings. But, what do I know?

So, I Googled the meme. What I found was an article on Snopes.com, the web site dedicated to fact-checking various dubious political claims. (Conservatives love to trash Snopes as being, from their point of view, liberally biased. I don’t know, maybe it is, though that doesn’t make it wrong.)

Snopes had not fact-checked this particular meme, but a similar one featuring a photo of a different kind of border barrier. 

Now, this photo is instantly recognizable as fake, in the sense that the fence is stretching across a parched, desert landscape, nowhere near the verdant Eden of Guatemala.

The ironic thing about this meme is that the “gigantic WALL” allegedly built by Mexico on its southern border – a formidable wall that the US should get off its ass and start building – is actually a section of the border fence the US has already built along the Mexican border.

(A murky detail about this meme: it was supposedly posted on the Facebook page of a “group” called “Americans for Common Sense”, which appears to me to be decidedly liberal-leaning. Also, the meme is no longer to be found on that Facebook page. Was someone punked?)

Anyway, to return to the first meme, it turns out someone on Facebook did some fact-checking of their own and identified the photo as originating from a Chinese manufacturer of wire-mesh fences.

Wire-mesh fences for prisons. Heavily guarded prisons. Let’s be honest, how unassailable would a wire-mesh fence like that be on the lesser-observed stretches of the Guatemalan border? With a decent pair of bolt cutters, you’d be through that thing in a Tijuana minute.

So, according the meme, America should follow Mexico’s example and secure its border by, if nothing else, erecting a mickey-mouse wire-mesh fence. Made in China, no less.

Now, you may argue that the real point of the meme is that Mexico has stricter immigration polices than America does (I don’t know), and this fact is represented by a photo of a fence, some fence, any fence.

Or the creator of the meme may be trying to highlight that Mexico has taken the issue seriously enough to at least build some kind of physical barrier along its entire southern border, though sadly you can’t find a decent enough photo of the actual fence to illustrate that point. At least they have a fence.

I’m not even sure that’s true. According to Wikipedia, Mexico has ten formal border crossings with Guatemala and 370 informal ones. In order to better stem the flow of illegal migrants, it seems Mexico is currently upgrading some of the informal border crossings to formal ones. There is no mention of a fence. Nada. A map published in the Economist last December did show a “fence” on Mexico’s southern border, but as one being “planned”, not “begun”.

So, I suspect that the US southern border really isn’t really less protected than Mexico’s.

Nice try, though, with the meme. 

Well, no, actually it was a pathetic try, but that doesn't stop it from being passed around constantly on the net. Of course, it doesn't.

The real Mexican-Guatemalan border.

Photo: Fernando Reyes