Fearing Societal Collapse, or Creating It?

Gloria (America Ferrera) explains being a woman to Barbie, in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.

In Dorothy L. Sayer’s essay, “The Human-Not-Quite-Human,”* she imagines how strange life would appear to men, if they were always judged in terms of their maleness:

If everything he wore, said, or did had to be justified by reference to female approval. . . if the center of his dress consciousness were the cod-piece, his interests held to be natural only in so far as they were sexual.

There’s a wide range of behavior that’s considered “male.”
Men can be interested in knowledge, sports, or both.
They’re allowed to enjoy solitude, or to be more social.
They can be “alpha males,” or they can be “good soldiers.”
They can choose to raise a family, or they can concentrate on their own satisfactions.
They can be burly, or they can be slim.
All these ways of living are acceptable, if they’re men.

If you’re a woman, it’s another story.
Today, as ever, women are allowed to be intelligent, but not too intelligent.
Then, they’re freaks!
It’s considered good if females are a bit shy, but they mustn’t be “wall flowers.”
It’s attractive if they’re a bit feisty, but only at the proper times.
Woman can be promoted to management, but they mustn’t be too mean, or too aggressive.
Women are pitied if they don’t bear children, but if men don’t participate in their families it isn’t a big deal.
Women can be a bit too fat, or a bit too thin, and they’re bullied for it either way (often by their own gender).
These are the rules, because females are still “the other.”

Feminists have been discussing this issue for many years.
America Ferrera was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar—for expressing virtually the same idea—in Gloria’s speech (written by Greta Gerwig) in 2023’s Barbie:

You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not too pretty that you tempt them too much, or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be part of the sisterhood. 

Katharine Hepburn resisting social norms by wearing pants, in the early 1930s.

It is much easier to be a “thinking woman” in the 2020s, then it was a hundred years ago (during Dorothy Sayers’ youth).
Then, it was considered extremely odd for a woman to wear pants, earn an advanced degree, or live on her own.
Francesca Wade’s book Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars tells the story of British artists and authors, who enjoyed lives as semi-independent women, in London, during the early 20th century.
The five women are: Hilda Doolittle (a poet), Dorothy L. Sayers (a mystery author and scholar), Jane Harrison (a scholar), Eileen Power (an historian), and Virginia Woolf (a writer).

Panel from “Fury of the Femizons” Savage Tales #1 (1971) by Stan Lee and John Romita Sr, showing a female-dominated society.
You can read the complete story HERE.

If we lived in a matriarchal society, we might be as obsessed with a man’s cod-piece, as men are with female breasts (always gazing below their waists, and not into their eyes).
Men might be told that they were “meant for” heavy labor, and to leave all the important thinking occupations to women.
Men might be criticized for shamelessly displaying their abs, and tempting women into lust.
Science-fiction has had a field day with these scenarios (mainly as comedies).

Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson looking befuddled, as usual.

In 2022, pundit Tucker Carlson, issued the strange Fox Nation documentary The End of Men.
In this film, Carlson decries the social and hormonal emasculation of American males.
Carlson postulates that, only by men reasserting dominance over women—and becoming hyper masculine—can the earth be put back on its’ proper axis.
Ads on TV ask people to contribute $19 a week to “stop transsexual athletes”.

This turmoil, over sex roles, is similar to what went on in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, when women were forced into the breeder role, and discouraged from higher education.
There were a few women who resisted this trend, for example, Sophie Scholl (1921-1943), who helped build the White Rose Movement.
However, most women meekly acquiesced to being helpmates. 

Mike Wellington (Christopher Walken) explaining how he “returns to the natural order,” with men having control over their wives, in 2004’s The Stepford Wives.

Senator Katie Britt—the female politician who read her State of the Union rebuttal speech from her kitchen—also seems concerned with the emasculation of men.
Why else would she turn herself into a Stepford wife? 

Kitchens aren’t a bad location to make a speech.
(For many of my co-workers—when I worked from home—their kitchen was their office.)
Senator Britt stated that being a wife and mother is her most important job, and that’s true.
Being a mom is more important than being a Senator.
(That’s why Nancy Pelosi waited until her youngest child was in high school, before she became a politician. Here I am, “woman-shaming;” to each their own.)

Katie Britt, attempting to be relatable, in a kitchen, during her State of the Union rebuttal.

The main point of Britt’s narrative, however, was (using her own words) that “the country we know and love is slipping away.”
It all goes back to the MAGA credo that only Trump can mystically eradicate the evils of “wokeness.”
(If a “woke” society would be one that was not patriarchal, not racist, and which accepted homosexuality, I’m with a “woke” society)

In order to prove her main point—that a Progressive America is a nightmare America—Britt told the story of Karla Romero, a woman who Britt did have some contact with (just not one-on-one) in 2023.
However, Romero’s tragedy of being raped (as a 12-year-old), didn’t happen in the U.S., and it wasn’t at the hands of a drug cartel.
The rapes happened during Republican President George Bush’s administration, in Mexico, after Karla Romero was kidnapped by a pimp. 

Britt, along with her handlers, used this “alternative truth” to blame President Biden for all of society’s ills, and to convince her fearful audience that only Trump could keep Christian women safe from sexual exploitation (as if any President could).
Britt’s goal was for Trump’s base to identify with her, but she’s a much worse actor than Trump.
(Her inauthenticity disturbed the mass audience, but it still might give her some Vice-Presidential points.)

Another issue that Britt brought up was the “DNA” of America, and how her white pioneer ancestors conquered the continent.
(Like Trump, Britt wants America to believe that only white Christians built this country.)
That section of her speech hasn’t been widely discussed.

MAGA Republicans seem to blame leftist Progressives for the role of women slowly evolving in Western society.
However, studies—like a 6/12/2023 U.N. report—indicate that there’s been no serious “improvement in biases against women in a decade.”
Nine out of ten people (worldwide) still believe that women are by nature less competent, and less fit to govern, than men.
While parts of the world may be headed in a progressive direction, real progress for women is at a stand still, and sometimes (as in abortion rights) going backward.

The theory that women should be subservient to men is based on the old “might makes right” principal.
Women tend to be smaller and to have less muscle strength than men.
Also, our main religions are based on the idea that for men to have control over women is somehow more “natural.”
As a result, since ancient times, there have been many more patriarchal than matriarchal societies. 

Women in this country were given the right to vote only 100 years ago, in 1920.
U.S. women were given the right to obtain a credit card (on their own), in 1974.
Women are underrepresented—both in the higher levels of government, and in Big Business—while at the same time being slightly overrepresented in higher education.
Overall, women still earn at least 16% less than men!

Registering disapproval of “societal trends,” by casting a vote for a con-man, is not a good idea.
Those who believe in a white hierarchy—with white men enjoying natural authority over women and non-whites—may think they’d be safe from any “inconveniences” brought on by living under a Trump reign.
If Trump is reelected—although contraception, in vitro fertilization, and abortion may no longer be allowed for poor and middle-class women—they’re convinced that these choices would still be granted to them.
MAGA voters may imagine that they’d be thrilled with “smaller” government, “lefties” cowed into submission, immigrants deported, less regulation of Big Business, the National Guard in charge of cities, and the U.S.A. setting up alliances with right-wing governments (like Putin’s Russia).
Be careful what you wish for.

*Unpopular Opinions, Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), Victor Gollancz, LTD., London, 1946.

Did McConnell (and Trump) Really Lower Your Taxes?

Scottish-born Scrooge McDuck (created in 1947 by Carl Barks for Walt Disney Company) is a wealthy business duck, shown diving into his personal money vault.

Some comedies of the 1950’s had interesting attitudes toward taxes and wealth.

In the 1950 fantasy—The Great Rupert (aka The Christmas Wish)—a vaudevillian family is unaware that a trained squirrel is responsible for money raining down on them from the ceiling (every Thursday between 3-3:30 PM).

Rupert, the squirrel, is moving money from their landlord’s secret stash in the apartment above.
The Amendola family is convinced that the cash is a heavenly gift, and they use it (reasonably wisely) to pay their rent, celebrate a lovely Christmas, and help their neighbors.
Local gossip brings the FBI, tax investigators, and the police.
However, there’s a happy ending.

Lobby card from the fantasy The Great Rupert, with Louie Amendola (Jimmy Durante, middle) and his wife (Queenie Smith, left) confronting representatives of the city, state, and Federal Government over their tax debt.

A scene—in which Mr. and Mrs. Amendola attempt to convince the taxmen that their money was a gift from above—is shown above.

Another comedy from 1950 is The Jackpot.
In this film, Bill Lawrence (James Stewart) wins $24,000 (in prizes) on a radio quiz program, only to learn he’ll need to pay $7,000 in taxes.
(In that era, according to the tax laws, you needed to pay taxes on the full retail prices for all won prizes.)
As a result, Jimmy’s pleasant life is turned upside down, and he could lose his job, his marriage, and his house.
In 1950, $24,000 was the equivalent of $309,038.34 today, and $7,000 was the equivalent of $90,136.18.

Lobby card from The Mating Game, with IRS agent Lorenzo Charlton (Tony Randall, left) trying to persuade Mariette Larkin (Debbie Reynolds, middle) and patriarch Pop Larkin (Paul Douglas, right) that the Larkin family owes money to the Federal Government.

The 1959 comedy, The Mating Game, tells the story of the Larkins—a farming family that lives by bartering for goods and services—and who haven’t filed tax returns in several generations.
Tony Randall is an IRS agent assigned to investigate how much back taxes they owe.
Like The Great Rupert, The Mating Game is a comedy with a happy ending.
In the case of the Larkin family, the Feds actually owe the Larkins money!

The theme of all of these films is that money doesn’t equal happiness.
It’s also that living in a nonmaterialistic way, is much better than existing as a tightfisted money-grubber.
In both The Great Rupert and The Mating Game, jealous people call up the IRS to report on their neighbors.
In The Great Rupert, a few neighbors are envious of the Amendola family; in The Mating Game, a wealthy neighbor desires the Larkin land.

Taxation is a mandatory contribution to a government (by its’ citizens), in order to acquire revenue for governmental needs.*
By designing new laws, and altering tax rates, governments do more than care for their citizens.
The taxation system affects the disposable income available to the population.
As economies change, so must the tax structures.

Bostonians tarring and feathering the excise man (based on a print published in London in 1774).

The individual income tax was first introduced, in 1798, in England.
However, individual income taxes didn’t become progressive until 1907 (in England), and 1914 (in the U.S.).
One principal of taxation is that taxes be equitable, but that’s a difficult goal to achieve.
Economists fear that taxpayers may choose to work less, save less, or invest less, depending on the tax structure; therefore, governments “tinker” with the tax code. 

There were some good things about the McConnell-Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, but all the good aspects were temporary!
The new law changed the tax brackets, and increased the income levels, which reduced some taxes.
The Tax Act also increased the standard deduction, so less people are itemizing.
The sad fact remains that most of the good changes all vanish in 2025! 

The main problem with the McConnell-Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was that the revised tax laws made inequality worse, plus it increased the national debt!
Besides permanently cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, it doubled the estate tax exemption from $11 million per couple to $22 million per couple, and cut the top rate from 39.6% to 37%.

McConnell, and Trump, claimed that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 would be “rocket fuel” for the economy.
They were wrong!
American businesses didn’t invest in new technology, hire more workers, or build more factories.
Instead, they fired workers, gave money to shareholders, and increased the compensation for CEOs.
Little money “trickled down” to middle-class and lower-class tax payers, and the tax system became less equitable.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the McConnell-Trump 2017 Tax Act will cost the Federal Government $1.9 trillion in revenue between 2019-2029.
Furthermore, the national debt increased to $7.8 trillion by the time Trump left office!
The Democratic Party should be talking more about those two facts.
Unless the Government is able to make further changes to the tax codes, in 2025—perhaps, so that people with higher incomes pay a bit more—the Government debt will continue to grow grow and social programs will need to be cut.
Choose your poison!

*All data on the history of taxes taken from the last printed set (1997) of Collier’s Encyclopedia.

The War on Immigrants

In the Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York, Bill Cutting “The Butcher” (Daniel Day Lewis, center front) particularly hates Irish immigrants.

America has had a love-hate relationship with immigration ever since the French arrived in Canada, and the Virginia Company was founded (in 1606) to settle sections of the North American coast.
French Canada wanted the Ontario region to be more French, and the Virginia Company wanted the colonies to be predominately English.

I’ve discussed Americans resenting immigrants (while at the same time Big Business needing immigration).
However, I’ve not written an entire memorandum.
Like many third-generation Americans, I’ve enjoyed the “polite fiction” that we live in a “happy melting pot,” and that most Americans believe in “liberty and justice for all.”
Over the last few years, I’ve come to the realization that this may be a delusion.

Redman Toys issued action figures for 2002’s Gangs of New York.

Bill Cutting (Bill the Butcher) wore the red, white, and blue sash of the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party.

By necessity, the Americas were originally settled by men.
(Of the first 18 Puritan wives who sailed on the Mayflower, 13 died during the first winter.)
During the early years of settlement, many men developed romantic partnerships with indigenous women.
However, the TPTB back in Europe frowned upon these relationships.
(My 2/8/24 memorandum: “Tobacco Wives and King’s Daughter” deals with how the French, and British, governments dealt with the issue of not enough “white” women.)

Later, the Founding Fathers made disparaging remarks about non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants.
Men of British heritage (like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson), worried as Anglo-Saxon families journeyed back to the safety of Britain, while rude Germans and unintelligible Swedes kept arriving.
Then, as now, the Founders were displeased with the quality of the immigrants.
It wasn’t enough that newcomers be from the British Isles; the Irish were despised, about as much as the Germans. 

The Redman Toys “The Butcher” action figure (Gangs of New York) came complete with extra weapons, and a stand with the Know-Nothing Party banner that read “Native Americans, Beware of Foreign Influence,” (with the “Ns” reversed).

As a woman of Southern Italian descent, this hatred is difficult to understand.
How are Brits able to dislike a people that looks, and acts, so similarly?
However, there’s a long history of Anglo-Saxons holding the Irish in contempt.
Just as ambitious Southern Italians traveled up to Lombardy, to find work after WWII, ambitious Irish men and women traveled to Britain, and the U.S., to “better themselves.”
However, while they did find jobs, Irish people didn’t find acceptance, especially at first.

The book Jane Austen’s England, by Roy and Lesley Adkins, makes clear that the Irish poor were considered the lowest of the low in England.
(The Adkins book covers the period from 1775-1817.)
In describing his fellow countrymen, teacher Thomas Finnegan said:

The [Irish] children were most depraved; they are exposed to every species of vice. . . and as for the parents, they are very dissolute, generally; on Sundays particularly they take their children with them to public houses.

1881 British cartoon showing a “Irish-American Dynamite Skunk” caged, in a London zoo.

When Irish Immigrants arrived in America, they were greeted with “No Irish Need Apply” signs in shop windows, and in newspaper advertisements.

Like other immigrants, the Irish were given the lowest-paying, dangerous, and most menial jobs.
After a few generations, however, the Irish were forgiven for not being Anglo-Saxon.

It’s no accident that—with the exceptions of Van Buren (Netherlands), Eisenhower (Germany), and Trump (Germany and Scotland)—all U.S. Presidents have had strong Anglo-Saxon, and/or Irish roots, on at least one side of their family trees.
(Scotland is only partially Anglo-Saxon.)
In nearly 250 years, there have been no primarily Italian, French, Greek, Slavic, Jewish, Hispanic, or Asian U.S. Presidents.
President Obama’s father was born in Kenya; ancestors on his maternal side were mostly Northern European and lived in this country since the early 1600s (earlier than the Mayflower).

American financier Stephen Girard was born in Bordeaux, France.

He bequeathed his entire fortune to social welfare institutions.

This portrait hangs in the U.S. Treasury Department, and is by James Reid Lambdin.

While not having Anglo ancestors is detrimental to being elected President, this “hardship” has not been as big a barrier to making money.
From the beginnings, recent immigrants have built fortunes faster than other Americans.
The first American millionaire was a Frenchman named Stephen Girard (1750-1831).
Today, one of the richest persons is Elon Musk, born in South Africa.
Studies attempt to analyze why entrepreneurship is so much stronger among first-generation Americans, than it is among Americans with long histories on American soil.

Seventeen Chinese men were lynched during the Los Angeles Massacre of 1871.
The Columbus Day holiday (1891) was a direct result of eleven dark-skinned Sicilian immigrants being lynched in New Orleans.
While these stories are horrific, we should remember that at least 6,400 African-American kidnapped immigrants—a group that didn’t arrive willingly—were lynched in the U.S., since the Civil War.
(”There Have Been More than 6,400 Lynchings Since the End of the Civil War, New Study Reveals” by Anagha Srikanth, 6/16/2020, The Hill.)
Lynching creates fear, and fear is a method of keeping the underclasses down.

Jane Lynch, and Jim Gaffigan, appeared on Finding Your Roots.

There’s little about the war against immigrants in grade school and high school textbooks.
Instead, we learn bits and pieces in college-level history courses, on Finding Your Roots (PBS), or the podcast “Untextbooked.”

I recently discovered a series of Chicago Tribune columns—one entitled ”Many Sicilians Are Here; Difficult to Assimilate”—in which anthropologist George A. Dorsey (1868-1931) expressed theories about Sicilian-Americans that are similar to what Trump is saying about current immigrants.
In one 6/4/1910 column, Dorsey said that Sicilians make zero contributions to American society, because Sicily is a land of “mediocre genius.”
He goes on to say that many Sicilian immigrants are criminals and Sicilian women are uneducable.
(One passage describes a Palermo woman drawing a knife on a physician.)

Statistics prove that immigrants are 30% less likely to commit crimes than home-grown criminals.
However, no one cares about statistics.
Trump signed a Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) bill on 1/20/2021, giving an estimated 200,000 Venezuelan exiles protection from deportation, but no one cares about that either.
(Link to Politico article “Trump grants Venezuelans Temporary Legal Status on His Way Out,” 1/19/21, by Sabrina Rodriquez.)

The fact remains that it isn’t just American society that’s built on immigration.
It’s human society.
Only a small number of us have sent our DNA to Ancestry, or 23 and Me.
Yet, so far, 10% of Southern “white” Americans are shown to have some Black ancestry.
Before Great Britain welcomed immigrants from Africa and Asia, England itself was a blend of Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Celts, and Scandinavians.
(As Dorothy L. Sayers put it, “the English are mongrels, and . . . they pride themselves upon being mongrels.”)
Each of us is a blend, even if we’re 100% Northern European, 100% Southern European, Asian, Jewish, Black, or any other type of person.

In Quatermass and the Pit, many Londoners descend from humans “altered” by insect-like Martians (Dr. Quatermass and Barbara Judd, center and right), while a few haven't been altered (Dr. Roney, left).*

An alien space ship is dug up, activates the altered humans, and chaos results!

Borders around countries aren’t solid.
Every region of the world has ethnic divisions.
Some Mexican-Americans lived on the same land since the 1700’s.
However, now that land isn’t part of Mexico; it’s part of the USA.
Ukrainians know themselves as a separate ethnic grouping, but Putin insists that Ukrainians are Russians.
Italy didn’t become a separate Italianate country until 1861.
(Giuseppe Garibaldi, who unified Italy, had hoped to make Nice—his birthplace—part of Italy, but he failed.)
It’s all a crap shoot whether you call yourself—Italian or French, Mexican or American, German or Slavic, Ukrainian or Russian, white or Black. Wars, social constructs, or forgetting your history, may place you on the “wrong side” of a divide.

*In 1967’s Quatermass and the Pit, Andrew Keir was Dr. Quatermass; James Donald was Dr. Roney; and Barbara Shelley was Barbara Judd (shown above, wearing the remnants of an EEG-like device that read her brain waves).

Trump’s Fence Was a Dumb Idea

Scene from The Great Wall (with Matt Damon).
In the 2016 film, the Great Wall was built not to keep out Huns, but to keep out monsters.

Rulers have built a few great walls in world history.
The oldest one on record was the Chinese “Great Wall” built around 220 B.C.
For some reason, some voters say they’ll vote for Trump in November of 2024—not because they like him as a man—but because they like “his policies.”
One of his “policies” was to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

The 1,500-mile Chinese Great Wall* was constructed between Inner Mongolia and China.
It was built with conscripted labor, over generations, and according to Chinese folklore each stone equates with the loss of one human life.
The gigantic monetary cost was a factor in the fall of the Ch’in Dynasty.
The height of the Great Wall ranged from 15-50 feet.
Its’ effectiveness depended on the ability of nearby troops to defend it against roaming tribes, like the Huns.

Morgan Freeman (Azeem) and Kevin Costner (Robin Hood) on location in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The 1991 movie was filmed near the 10% of Hadrian’s Wall that still remains.

Around 117-122 A.D., the 73-mile Hadrian’s Wall* was built to secure the Roman north-western border, as well as control commerce and immigration.
(The wall didn’t separate Britain from Scotland.)
This wall was about 20 feet high, had a walkway on top (patrolled by sentries), and also had a 30-foot ditch/fosse at its’ base.
Just the construction of the ditch/enforcement zone alone involved moving nearly 2 million yards of rock and earth, and the structure took around five years to build.
According to historical accounts, Hadrian actually helped design Hadrian’s Wall; Hadrian (unlike Trump) had design and construction knowledge.

President Ronald Reagan speaking in front of the Berlin Wall.

As to the U.S.-Mexico border barriers, before WWII, fences were built to keep cattle on their side of the border.
Beginning with the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, fences began to be built, specifically to keep Mexican people out.
As late as 1986, however, Ronald Reagan disparaged putting up more barriers and fences at the border, saying—during a debate with George H.W. Bush—that instead there should be more legal work permits for Mexicans.
Reagan did end up building more fences.
After Reagan’s administration, both Democratic and Republican administrations gradually added to barriers.
In addition, Presidents maintained the fences that were already there, just as President Biden is doing now.

During Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, he promised to build a concrete barrier between the U.S. and Mexico...which Mexico would pay for.
Potential voters seemed to like the “idea” of less immigration from Mexico, and ignored the wall’s impracticality.
What Trump, and his MAGA supporters, didn’t realize was that there were many good reasons why building a heavier barrier was not a good idea.
Chief among the reasons, was cost.
There’s also the difficulty that the Federal Government doesn’t own most of the land along the border.
Finally, there are all the problems that more and heavier barriers cause in terms of the ecosystem, animal habitats, and flooding.

Trump’s hostility toward Mexicans, and immigration, helped win him the White House.
Congress approved $1.375 billion for the wall in 2021, and a total of $15 billion was appropriated in total, some derived from Pentagon funds.
(President Biden was able to send $2.2 billion back to the Pentagon. He’d like to claw back more of the billions that have not yet been spent, but for that he’d need Congressional approval.)

According to a BBC News article—“Trump Wall: How Much Has He Actually Built” (Lucy Rodgers and Dominic Bailey, updated 10/31/2020)—there were 654 miles of barrier fence, between the U.S and Mexico, when Trump took office in 2016.
(354 miles were barricades and 300 miles were fencing.)
By 2020, there was 669 miles of primary barrier, a gain of only 15 miles, where there had been no barrier before.

Actually, the Trump “Wall” isn’t really a wall at all; it’s steel fencing (bollard) that you can see through.
(Better for the environment, and cheaper, too!)
However, Trump’s new fence can be cut through with power tools available at any hardware store.
(Read the Washington Post article: “Smugglers Are Sawing Through New Sections of Trump’s Border Wall.”)

In the end, the U.S. government paid for Trump’s fence.
The original estimated cost was $20 million per mile ($11 billion total).
However—between paying for steel and concrete, and paying for land—that number grew to as much as $46 million per mile, in some sections.
Is a steel fence really worth that much money, especially when it’s clearly ineffective?

According to U.S. News & World Report, (Claire Hansen, 2/7/2022) the 18- to 30-foot steel fencing is anchored in concrete, and some of the barriers feature sensors, lights, and even cameras.
Whether all cameras are being monitored, is unclear. 

What Trump’s fence has in common—with the Great Wall of China and Hadrian’s Wall—is that all three were very expensive, and require maintenance.
What they don’t have in common is that the Chinese wall, and the Roman wall, were adequately staffed with soldiers.
Without soldiers, or a monitoring system, no barrier fence (or wall) can keep people out.

While the Chinese and Roman governments had control of the land—where they built the Great Wall and Hadrian’s Wall—the Federal Government doesn’t own all the land where it would like to put up a fence.
The people who do own the land (private citizens, various nature preserves, and Native American tribes) have fought against building more barriers on their property.
(That’s one of the reasons why there was only a net gain of 15 miles.)

Besides attempting to build the “Trump Wall,” Trump’s minions did try to stem the immigration flow between the U.S. and Mexico by taking 472 administrative actions.
These actions mainly diminished humanitarian protections, however, and made the immigration system even more chaotic.

Recently, a new immigration bill was worked out by the Senate, and (likely) won’t even be considered by the House.
This bill contains a 70/30 blend of right-wing and progressive ideas designed to help solve the immigration crisis:

• Emergency powers would be invoked, if more than 5,000 people enter on a given day.
• People wouldn’t need to wait 180 days for a work permit; they’d receive a permit as soon as they passed a much higher initial screening.
• Unauthorized immigrants, once living in the U.S., would face a 13-year waiting period to become citizens.
• The administration would be allowed to immediately deport migrants (except unaccompanied minors) who don’t enter at official ports of entry.
• Up to 4,300 new asylum officers would be hired to work on asylum cases.

However, Trump, anti-immigration forces, and immigration advocates are all against this bill, so I guess it’s not worth talking about.

In 1984’s Moscow on the Hudson (filmed the Reagan administrations) Vladmir Ivanoff (Robin Williams) was a Russian defector, welcomed to live free in the Land of Opportunity.

The skyline of New York is on the left, and that of Moscow is on the right.

President Obama actually deported more immigrants during his administration than President Trump.
President Obama deported 3.2 million immigrants between 2009-2012, and another 2.2 million immigrants between 2012-2016.
Trump deported around 2 million immigrants.

Candidate Trump has promised that, if elected in 2024, he’d change his 2016-2020 pattern, and start a mass deportation plan.
If Trump uses political advisor Stephen Miller’s proposals, he’d do this—not through the courts—but by federalizing the National Guard.
I’m not sure where Trump is planning to obtain the lists of who is to be deported, or how people would be removed.
Would the deportees be loaded on airplanes, in buses, or in train/cattle cars?
But then, Trump has never been a “detail man.” He’s a “big picture” person.
That’s why his wall (or fence) plans failed.

*The historical data on the Chinese Great Wall, and Hadrian’s Wall, is taken from articles in the last printed 24-volume set (1997) of Collier’s Encyclopedia.

It’s a Puzzlement

I’ve been trying to figure out since 2016 why Americans would vote for Donald Trump.

In 1966’s The King and I, King Mongkut of Siam (Yul Brynner) is puzzled by teacher Anna Leonowens’ (Deborah Kerr) lessons about Western culture.

As King Mongkut says in the Hammerstein musical: “Is a puzzlement.”
I have a shelf of books on the Trump administration.
I still don’t fully understand why people would vote for Trump, a man who is far from admirable.

There are various reasons why Trump was elected via the electoral college in 2016, and why he actually received more popular votes in 2020, than he did in 2016.
This memorandum is an attempt to explain why people still support him.

One reason why Trump won the electoral college (but lost the popular vote) in 2016, is the old story of rural Republicans having more power in the electoral college than big-city Democrats.
American novelist Barbara Kingsolver discussed—in a 6/12/2023 Guardian article, by Lisa Allardice—how rural people have become so tired of being mocked by city people that they want to blow up the system! 

In 1975’s Crazy Mama, Melba (Cloris Leachman, in red), pretends to hold her mother, Sheba (Ann Southern, in blue) hostage, so they can rob a grocery store.

Melba, Sheba, and Cheryl Stokes (Linda Purl) try to regain the Stokes farm, and fight back against a cruel America in the 1950s.

Wanting to blow up the system, isn’t just a goal of the rural South.
Many Americans are frustrated with news organizations, higher education, and the U.S. government.
These Americans believe that these groups look down on them, and are setting unrealistic standards for how they should behave.
(MAGA people oddly equate those organizations with Leftists and the Democratic party.
That’s a stretch.)
Meanwhile, mediocre CEOs, top tier performers, and sports stars rake in millions, while workers make less in real terms, than we did in the 1970s.
To these angry voters, a vote for Trump isn’t merely a vote for him.
It’s an act of rebellion against an elitist system. 

In posters for the 1960’s comedy Kisses for My President, the husband, and “First Fellow” (Fred MacMurray)—of President Leslie McCloud (Polly Bergen)—wore a demeaning flowery hat.

Another reason for Trump “winning” in 2016, was the fact that Hillary Clinton is female.
Although Clinton did win the popular vote, she won despite some voters not seeing her as “presidential material.”
Some voters may not support President Joe Biden in 2024 because they don’t want Kamala Harris to become President (in case of Biden’s death).
If Nikki Haley were somehow able to become the Republican nominee, would these voters really vote for a Sikh-raised, now Christian, daughter of immigrant parents?
I don’t think so.
The prejudice against women having presidential power is still too deep. 

Some Americans fear more than Feminism.
They’re afraid that their way of life is being threatened.
I suppose that, from their perspectives, the current world doesn’t make sense.
They want to go back to the 1950s, when men were men and women were women, and white Anglo-Saxon Christians were unquestionably at the top of the food chain. 

Donald Trump (himself) gives directions to Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin, left) in 1992’s Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

Director Chris Columbus says Trump “bullied” his way into the movie; Trump claims he was “begged to appear.”

In 2024, star Macaulay Culkin is one, of many, trying to remove this bit from the film.

A reason why people support Trump—even those who don’t like him personally—is because he’s promised “strong leadership” and maintaining “traditional” values (just as other Republicans have).
Trump doesn’t seem to have any values at all, except keeping himself solvent.
However, that vapidity allows people to maintain the illusion that his fuzzy values, somehow match theirs. 

There’s a culture war going on, and it’s heating up.
Each side considers the other side “mad” and unreasonable.
A few years back, big companies set up Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) departments.
Now, there’s a serious backlash against such departments, and Kentucky governmental officials are trying to outlaw them.
Many thousands of picture books were published on Black heroes, and containing LGBTQ stories.
Now, those books are being banned, along with dictionaries and encyclopedias (hated symbols of knowledge).
“Bad actors” are creating pornographic books, and convincing parents that these fake books are being used as textbooks in grade schools.
(The culture war is getting really ugly!)

I realize that people are tired of “the lesser of two evils” presidential elections, and pretending that previous U.S. Presidents weren’t flawed.
Presidents have made serious nationalistic errors during their administrations*—and distrust of government has been building.
This has resulted in isolationism, and those fears are being used by Trump. 

One factor is that—with so much confusing information available on the web—finding “the facts” has become difficult.
(See my 5/6/2023 memorandum “The Argument Over “Truth.”)
Believe it or not, people are going back to ideas like “the earth is flat,” and a literal belief in the Bible.
People are judging information by the source of the data—its’ side on the cultural divide—and only believing what they want to believe.
(After all, with computer-generated imagery and sound, anything can be faked.)

In 1971’s Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye (Topol) sings about not having to work hard, if he were rich.

Trump—the laziest President in U.S. history—spent 307 days golfing, the highest number for any US President, ever.

Another reason for Trump keeping his “fan base,” is the illusion that he’s a great businessman, and that he’ll run the country well.
Few realize that The Apprentice office was a stage set, and that Trump was a lazy CEO, interested mainly in selling his “brand.”
He was never as skilled at running the Trump Organization as his grandmother (who started Elizabeth Trump and Son), or even his father.
Besides that, the revolving door of Republicans who were fired, or forced out—during his administration—makes it clear that Trump was never a sound President.

Trump is a very “amusing” candidate, and that in itself may be enough to win support.
He mugs for the camera.
He hugs the U.S. flag.
Most of all, he’s conquered his phobia of shaking hands with strangers.
Trump’s rich man belief that he “owns the room” is very attractive to MAGA voters.
While most politicians are boring, part of being a con man is to be an entertainer.

George C. Scott played Mordecai Jones, in 1967’s Flim-Flam Man, known to British audiences as One Born Every Minute.

(N.Y. banker David Hannum said “There’s a sucker born every minute,” about a P.T. Barnum exhibit, but Barnum himself never said it.) 

One chapter in Aja Raden’s nonfiction book, The Truth About Lies, deals with the story of Gregor MacGregor (1786-1845).
MacGregor was a Scottish confidence man, who stole money from rubes—from Britain to Venezuela—for over 40 years.
Raden explains how the more deeply MacGregor’s victims were invested in his lies, the more stubbornly they insisted on believing in him.

I once planned a memorandum on why Trump would be a bad president again.
However, I’ve decided that it’s not worth my time.
Nearly every reason why Trump must not win election in 2024, is out there for all to see and hear.
Many follow him blindly, or (worse still) imagine that he’s somehow better than Joe Biden.
Instead, I’m planning memorandums on why the Republican 2017 tax changes wreaked havoc, why the Trump wall cost as much as $46 million per mile, and why we should all vote in 2024.

*For further information on “bad judgment calls” made by U.S. Presidents, read The Spy Masters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future, by Chris Whipple (Scribner, 2020) and Profusely Illustrated, by Edward Sorel (Alfred A. Knopt, 2021) a memoir that has 172 great illustrations!