Seventh Century Solution To A Twenty-First Century Problem?

At least, that's what some observers say.

Actually, it is a seventh-century B.C. solution. At least, that's when the Great Wall of China was first begun.

It didn't keep the Mongols and other nomads from entering China.

Nearly three millennia later (in 1981), my wife and I passed through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin. That wall didn't keep us out, and it didn't keep all of the Berliners in. It survived all the way from 1961 to 1992.

It didn't do much good.

So what is the problem Donald J. Trump is actually trying to solve?

Best to know that before spending a lot of money.

We seem to have pretty well solved the problem of illegal immigration from Mexico.

NAFTA did that.

More cruelty and inhumanity and refusal to carry out our international obligations toward refugees and asylum seekers won't make that better.

Ozymandius

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away". 

Literature Network » Percy Bysshe Shelley » Ozymandias