Political motivations aside, strategically what is an argument in favor of building a (new?) wall?
What's wrong with the border security as it stands today, or what materially needs to be improved?
Are there aspects to an infrastructure project for the wall that might appeal or at least tactically be understood as reasonable and not motivated by a politics?
Just a friendly non-political discussion on the merits of
T h e W A L L
?
Okay, here are 5 non-political reasons for building a wall.
Tourism
Think of the engineering involved to build over mountains and across rivers. People will come from around the world to see this architectural achievement—forget visiting Paris and the Eiffel Tower or the formerly Great Wall in China.
Military
It will be visible from space, allowing returning Space Force fleets to be able to find Earth if they get lost.
Soil Erosion
Texas has a tremendous number of windmills in operation. All that wind is blowing valuable soil out of our country. The Wall would act as a retaining wall to reduce erosion.
Outdoor Art
Flood walls are often painted as part of community betterment projects. Imagine the civic pride once your community’s section of the wall has been decorated with artwork.
Summer Movie Nights
All you need is an outdoor movie projector. Camp out under the stars with your kids in front of the wall and have the best movie night ever.
EXCELLENT POINTS! And, I wanted to add some reasonable non-political commentary to this thread....but, I got NOTHING. LOL
I indexed a very interesting book a couple of years ago now. (Jeez, time flies.) The author is a landscape architect at UC Berkeley—his book presents all sorts of wall alternatives, mostly tongue-in-cheek—but it is quite thought-provoking, and includes commentary from both Mexican and American perspectives. It is more like an imaginary exhibition catalog than political propoganda.
Chris MacAskillInteresting. I had a call with Steven Levy a couple months ago and we talked about an article he wrote in WIRED about border security:
I've known him for years so it was quite fascinating to have him explain how much time and travel WIRED allowed him to research the story. Palmer Luckey and Palantir have a lot of engineering horsepower, so I was really happy to see them engaged in this.
Wow. Fascinating (and chilling) article.
In a 10-week span since the towers were installed, Lattice helped agents catch 55 people and seize 982 pounds of marijuana. (For 39 of those individuals, drugs were not involved, suggesting they were just looking for a better life.)
What happens next? Do we create mobile border check-points—DHS officials on ATVs who apprehend the few who are drug runners before pulling out laptops to process others who are seeking asylum, and then directing the remainder back to their own country? Or does the fact that these people are now detectable in a no-man’s land make it too easy to just send out a DoD battlefield drone to eliminate the “enemy” without ever having any human contact at all? For current leaders, who have not even blinked when confronted with the cruelty of separating families, drone-kills might be a welcome option. Sickening.
@Chris — you broke the rules. This thread was supposed to be apolitical.
As if...
@Chris — you broke the rules. This thread was supposed to be apolitical.
As if...
I think @gorudy was opening up a can of worms when he started this thread.
😉
Seriously though, I found Chris’s share fascinating and he broadened the discussion to “What exactly do we mean by a wall?”
What about the loss of tourism, outdoor art and summer-under-the-stars film screenings?
On the other hand, I think the ability to identify animals could be beneficial to ranchers in tracking down runaway cattle or getting an alert to an approaching wolf or other cattle predator.
Could the government provide an animal only feed to ranchers if a virtual wall was implemented?
FYI-There are already animal tracking technologies involving ear tags with chips that carry all sorts of information about the animal.
And what happens if a wolf goes ninja-style, sneaking up on each cow and biting off their chipped ear? A virtual wall would alert ranchers to the wolf before it got within a mile of the cattle.
Also, DARPA has a long history of bringing technological innovations to the world that ultimately have civilian applications: the internet, voice recognition software and GPS to name a few. Who knows what new applications the technology behind a virtual wall will bring?
Great article and it all makes great sense. Yea, a wall seems so pedestrian in it's adjective form. The Cartels are very sophisticated.
The ranchers I know are pretty slow to adopt this tracking technology—but, you’re right, I bet if there was a visual representation of the geography, they would adopt it much more quickly. Right now, they have to watch the GPS signal and notice when an animal has not moved for a long while. Then they have to go check in person to see if the animal is mired in sand, or wounded, or dead. That takes a lot of effort.
Excuse my “fan boy” praises of Cake but
This is what I love about C A K E !!!
Having fun, enjoyable and meaningful conversations with other curious-minded humans, sharing insights from the world as well as from our own community and lives, and learning new things that I would otherwise be the poorer for not knowing if I hadn’t logged in today.
Instead of wasting American tax dollars on a symbol of separation, we should capitalize on the fact that Mexico and the United States are great neighbors and trade partners, not enemies
Interesting editorial.
I’m afraid so much damage has been done to this concept that it is going to take a whole different type of leader and leadership team to reframe this fact and make this possible. The disdain with which the current US leader (and his base) refers to Mexico (and practically every other group and individual he mentions) is toxic to friendly and effective partnerships...
What's wrong with the border security as it stands today, or what materially needs to be improved?
As a resident of the borderlands, my simplistic perspective is it's not functional as a deterrent.
Additionally, we do have indigenous populations - and their concerns:
This border is ~1950 miles long. No financially feasible way to put a physical barrier up along every mile of it.
As a resident of the borderlands, my simplistic perspective is it's not functional as a deterrent.
Would love to hear more about your perspective.
I consider myself very uninformed when it comes to the realities of the border and living near it... I've never come within 50 miles of the US/Mexican border it's just a concept to me. I know this will probably sound a bit silly but i'm from New England, basically, in my mind the border is very secure and I assume difficult to cross. Is that not the case? Honestly, I bet many folks so far removed from the border have any real concept of what should or shouldn't be done to keep or make the border secure.
We have areas in every state along the southern border where you can be a solitary person in a twenty mile radius - and you may or may not have cell phone signal. It's this desolation that makes it easy to cross.
I know this will probably sound a bit silly but i'm from New England, basically, in my mind the border is very secure and I assume difficult to cross. Is that not the case?
Don't know if you saw this from last summer...
Every major highway along the southern U.S. has more-or-less permanent locations where this check is made - 24/7/365. For this check to happen much closer to those that are in charge isn't necessarily a bad thing, in my mind.
Does it help? All depends on who you talk with, I guess.
Chris MacAskill👆Fascinating article. Helps explain why some of my Southern Utah family is furious at the feds. They want mines and power plants.
@gorudy It's quite an eye-opener to cross the Mexican border, as 100,000 people do each day. I've done it many times in Texas, Arizona and California. Imagine being Border Control and having a flood of cars, busses, and trucks every day — lines for as long as the eye can see, drivers and passengers irritated by the long delays.
Then imagine all the ways to smuggle people, drugs and weapons. Imagine airport security except people are in vehicles so x-rays aren't an option.
Hard to see how a concrete wall helps.
I have a friend who started his law enforcement career as a border agent many years ago. He said it was like a hazing—agents had rotating assignments to go out and spend days in the wilderness along the border. They had to basically set up a primitive camp and spend the nights watching for drug runners and smugglers through infra red scopes. It was lonely and dangerous. He said it was also heart-breaking to discover women and children who were in no way prepared for the trek, but were desperate to escape to a better life.
He does not refer to that time in his life as “the good ol’ days.”
Chris MacAskill
Brian StrongFrom the podcast notes:
This macabre discovery sent him reeling, needing to know what exactly happened to the body, and how many migrants die that way in the wilderness. In researching border-crosser deaths in the Arizona desert, he noticed something surprising. Sometime in the late-1990s, the number of migrant deaths shot up dramatically and have stayed high since. Jason traced this increase to a Border Patrol policy still in effect, called “Prevention Through Deterrence.”
@bstrong If I only had time to listen to one of the three episodes, which one would you recommend?
