By now it’s pretty clear that Donald Trump has spent his entire life locked up inside a walled compound, for had he ever ventured out his own, sans security detail, he’d have surely learned how to get along with others, thus becoming a mature adult instead of a temperamental toddler.
In the town where I grew up, there were no walls and very few fences. To erect a barrier between yourself and your next-door neighbor was looked upon as unsocial. How would your kids become acquainted with the neighboring kids if they were fenced in? How would your mutt manage to impregnate the neighbor’s precious purebred Norwegian Lundehund?
What few fences we had were of chain link—sufficient to corral horny dogs while at the same time not blocking the view. A transparent chain link fence, combined with a large picture window, ensured that you had nothing to hide—else why would you ever draw the curtains?
On dark summer nights you could look out your big picture window and see flashlights bobbing like fireflies across your lawn. Burglars? Prowlers? Nope. It was just a bunch of kids on the hunt for night crawlers, none of whom ever bothered to ask permission. To this day I can tell you which yards in my hometown yielded maximum wormage, which during fishing season could be packaged and marketed for pocket change. And I’m talking here about high quality free-ranging night crawlers—not the substandard worm farmed variety.
Scarier properties we steered clear of; that is, except on Halloween, when children kids were permitted to conduct undercover surveillance. Through tiny eyeholes, raggedly breathing like Jason Voorhees, we would inspect strange and exotic living rooms. And yes, trick-or-treaters were always invited in, leaving behind no anxious parents outside on the sidewalk, waiting and hoping that their children would miraculously come out alive. Well, of course we would! What possible harm could come from taking candy from strangers?
Call it a wall, call it a steel barrier, call it an iron curtain—for the life of me I can’t see how America will be made greater by shutting out our neighbors and shutting in ourselves. Oh, sure, purebred dogs won’t engage in unprotected sex, nor will one’s children and grandchildren be tempted to marry outside their gene pool. But here’s the rub: in order to build and maintain that wall, you’re going to have to hire a whole lot of Mexican workers. That is, if you want the job done right, at a reasonable price.