THE WALL, THE WIZARD AND THE RAINBOW

THE WALL, THE WIZARD AND THE RAINBOW

"Over the Rainbow" is probably my favorite song.

I have recordings of it by a half dozen artists.  

There's Willie Nelson's earthy version, his rasp turning romance into metaphorical reality.  

There's Israel Kamkawiwo'Ole's phantasmagorical version, original verses jumbled over the backdrop of a tropical ukulele in a way that prevents the message from becoming old.

There's Ariana Grande's raw version, closing for the victims of Manchester's concert bombing, where her tears and tone combined to produce hope.

And then, of course, there's the original version by Judy Garland, sung in the 1939 film,  The Wizard of Oz.

In the movie, the song is one of the bookends of  the film.  It is sung at the beginning, more or less as an introduction to the dreamy adventures that will unfold as a little girl and her dog, with their trio of scarecrow, cowardly lion and heartless tin man, travel the yellow brick road in search of brains, brawn and love on a wizard's promise that they will have all three if only they destroy the wicked witch.

The other bookend is at the end -- the scene where Toto pulls back the curtain  to expose  the faux wizard spewing fear and bloviation, aided and abetted by assorted mechanical extras, as he reneges on his promise, at which point Dorothy and her friends are forced to discover that what they wanted they had all along.  

It was in themselves.

They just hadn't been looking in the right place.

Today in  America, Donald Trump wants a wall. It was the signature and central promise of his presidential campaign.  In rally after rally, he brought angry crowds to their feet with its promise.  Paid for by Mexico. Nothing little or impermanent. Big and long, stretching from Tijuana to Texas. 

And impenetrable.

A bit like Trump himself.

On the merits, this was and remains an utterly harebrained idea.  

There isn't a southern border crisis.  The number of illegals crossing the southern border is in fact at an all time low.  The vast majority of undocumented aliens now in the country came here by air and have over-stayed their visas.  

A wall from  Tijuana to Texas will not stop that.  

Nor do the experts in charge of border security  want a wall, which they consider a waste.  Instead they want more border agents and greater broad band at points of entry, where the majority of those who show up want asylum, where their showing up is entirely legal, and where there is now a backlog brought on by Trump's refusal to allow them into the country pending their asylum hearings.  

Trump argues that asylum seekers come here and then fail to show up at their hearings.  This is false (more than 90% show up). He also claims that those coming across the border are criminals and terrorists, which is also false (in fact, immigrants as a whole are more law-abiding than natural born citizens, and no terrorist has come across the southern border; the 9/11 terrorists came here by plane and from the north).  The American drug problem is of course fueled in part by foreign suppliers.  But they come in by air, sea, tunnel and (at points of entry) truck, none of which the wall will prevent.  Which is why the experts want more agents and broad band at those points of entry, and more funding for the Coast Guard to interdict sea based smuggling.

They also want air conditioned trailers for the drug sniffing dogs.

Who apparently are baking in the southwestern heat.

None of this has changed Trump's view in the slightest.  

Instead, he has now closed down the federal government, extorting Congress to appropriate more than $5 billion to start building his wall.  More than 800,000 federal workers are furloughed or working without pay, many of whom are now showing up at food banks for free meals.  The Democrats are willing to negotiate on border issues but not at the point of a virtual gun; they want the government opened without pre-conditions.  A number of Republicans want this as well.

But Trump doesn't.

The petulant childishness of it all has started to have an effect on Trump's approval ratings, which weren't any good to begin with.  Gallup has him at 37% approval and Five Thirty-Eight's running average has him below 40% for the first time in a long time.

Nevertheless, and through it all, some significant portion of Americans approve of Trump and the wall.  In fact, his base is immovable on the subject.

Why?

That question has, of late,  brought me back to Oz.

Border control is about security and Trump's base, for all its anger and bravado, is insecure.  For some of them, the insecurity takes the form of a grossly unequal share of an economic pie that expanded enormously over the past forty years and a labor market that treats them like expendable parts.  For others, the insecurity is emotional, born of a perception that coastal elites and the college class look down on them and their values, whether those values take the form of opposition to marriage equality and abortion or a love affair with Donald Trump and his wall.

Values are critical.

Were the wall central to any of them, the argument for it would be, if not persuasive, at least defensible.

But Trump's wall is tied to no American value whatsoever.

Or, as Dorothy would put it, "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."

The wall won't relieve or in any way even mitigate inequality or project strength.  It won't lower the number of illegals coming into the country.  In fact,  by diverting scarce resources to this whitest elephant of a project, it will probably result in more undocumented or illegal aliens in our midst.

America is not defined by its borders.  It is defined by its foundational ideas and values -- freedom, equal opportunity, the rule of law and equality before the law.  None of the causes of today's economic or cultural insecurity can be solved by closing the government.  We can solve them, however, or at least begin to, by adhering to those values.  Freedom and equal opportunity can provide the back drop and energy for policies that redistribute some of the enormous productivity gains of the last forty years to those who were left out.  And the rule of law and equality before the law can confront the corruption that has made that possible and preserve the liberty that respects differences of opinion, religion and taste.  As one former president remarked not so long ago, "There is nothing wrong with America than cannot be cured with what is right with America."

Trump's base needs to stop paying attention to the man behind the curtain.  

As Dorothy and her friends discovered, he is "a bad wizard."

We can't wish away problems or solve them with closed doors.

But we can embrace America's foundational values.

It's not as easy as clicking one's heels.

But, in the 242 years this American experiment has thrived, it's the only way we've ever gotten . . .

Over the rainbow.