I try to avoid politics — not because they aren’t important but rather because they’re boring. I’d rather be anything, including dead, than bored.
Lucky for me, I can do something about boredom. It isn’t always received well by others, but as long as I don’t push it to the point of gunfire, it’s a lifesaver for me.
Having said that about politics, I confess that I sometimes I have national policy ideas so brilliant I just have to speak out in the event that they are somehow useful. I’ve had maybe three of those since the fourth grade.
I had one yesterday, and it concerns the wall a certain president insists on being built between the United States and Mexico, Central America, South America, the Falkland Islands and Antarctica.
I have mixed and thoroughly uninformed opinions about the most recent efforts to stem illegal immigration.
Conservative Me • “#%@! penguins waddling up here to steal our jobs. The nerve of those little trespassers.”
Liberal Me • “There are plenty of jobs penguins can do that Americans won’t. Also, it’s freezing down there. Where’s your heart?”
As you can tell, I don’t pay a lot of attention to politics.
Anyway, the wall. I don’t care whether it gets built. If it doesn’t, the U.S. will find another way to plow itself deeper into debt by building something that will be out of fashion before we know it.
Note: See Hadrian’s Wall, the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China, etc. Also, we should remember the Alamo. When that many Mexicans want to come inside, no amount of wall is going to keep them out.
Case in point is the tunnel under the border recently discovered by law enforcement. A wall won’t stop people willing to dig under it. Wherever there is a wall along our border with Mexico, tunnels have been discovered to move guns, terrorists, drugs (and maybe even penguins) into the U.S.
Another problem with a wall is that it poses no hindrance to people willing to fly over it. This can be accomplished by clandestine aircraft, large drones, hovercrafts, even catapults. A wall hasn’t been built that can keep folks out if they’re willing to resort to the expense and risk of taking to the air.
In fact, you’ll know just how desperate people are to achieve freedom and the American dream if they’re willing to be flung over an 80-foot-high wall via a trebuchet. Assuming they survive, isn’t that the kind of determination we want in America?
It’s also possible to sail or swim around the ends of the wall. In fact, I believe that’s how many penguins and other aquatic trespassers get in.
Land, sea and air. What other ways are there to defeat a hideously expensive and soon-to-be-outdated wall?
It’s possible to breach the wall temporarily by using some sort of large bashing instrument such as a commandeered military tank, a huge piece of construction equipment, or even a rented rhinoceros. Just run them full speed into the wall.
As soon as the breach is made, it’s olly, olly, oxen free until enough U.S. troops can be moved to the hole and seal it off again. Those illegal immigrants captured can even be forced to bury the dead rhino.
Perhaps the wall could serve as an I.Q. test. All those who are desperate and smart enough to get through, over, under or around it might be just the kind of people we want in this country.
God knows it’s already full of lazy types who did nothing to get here except be descended from people who risked everything they had.
It’s just a suggestion. But, in the end, so is every wall.
Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.
