The Wall

Government that holds hostages typically is not good government. It is a failing strategy of President Donald J. Trump to have to resort to extreme measures and gamble that emergency declarations will get him what he wants. But it makes sense that Trump is so worried about his political survival that extraordinary measures seem the only course of action left.  I am of course talking about the partial government shutdown over the ridiculous insistence on a wall - concrete or steel or whatever - along the U.S. and Mexican border.
A wall cutting through post-war Germany should serve as a historic example that those approaches don’t work.
There is no doubt that the immigration law needs an overhaul because it does not serve the country well. But to think that a complex immigration system can be fixed by building a wall is showing a very, very limited and simplistic understanding of the problem.
It is evident that Donald Trump is under the impression that he is a monarch-like figure who can do as he pleases to get his way. This individual, who has never held public office and failed miserably in several business ventures, has no idea that the noble job of the highest office in the land is to serve the public.
Like a doctor, presidents should first and foremost “do no harm.” Instead, under Trump, the citizens of this country have been constantly under assault. Immigrants are characterized as murdering, drug-slinging rapists; the press is characterized as “the enemy of the people”, women are demeaned, people with disabilities were ridiculed and now federal employees are furloughed, expected to work without a paycheck and are held as pawns in Trump’s game of playing chicken with Congress. Please, when is enough enough already?  
Populist figures like Trump feed their base fears and the base gobbles it up willingly without rationally examining the underlying facts.  After every Trump speech an army of fact checkers need to point out the falsehoods and outright lies that we are being fed. It is time for Congress and in particular the Republican Party to step up and demand that this non-sense ends.
Remember what makes this country great?
Liberty, equality and a system of justice. Not walls, fear-mongering and unpredictable chaos. —D.H.—