Big Beautiful Wall

Todd Miller over at Tomdispatch has a decent little discussion about the backstory to the "OMFG! The beaners are revolting! Send in the Army!" tales we've been reading about ARNG troopers being dispatched to help fortify La Frontera, seeing as how the traitorous Dhimmicrats won't vote for Trump's Big Beautiful Wall.

I've been thinking about this, and ended up posting a long piece over at GFT discussing how I think that the problem goes much deeper, into the way we frame this as an "immigration" or "border control" problem.

It's not. It's a "capitalism" problem, and to even have any remote hope of solving it - and as Miller points out that when the Chinese climate change hoax really kicks in it's likely to mean massive population shifts from the tropics on a scale that will make the current situation look like a country club weenie roast - would mean a seriously unsparing look at how We the People have set up our economic system to lure the very people We then have the sort of hissyfit about that leads to us doing dumbass things like the election of an orange-colored real estate grifter to national office.

"The bottom line is that to keep meat cheap the business had to cut costs, and worker's pay is typically the single biggest cost of any business.

The same is true of nearly any business you look at that employs significant numbers of undocumented people. Construction, landscaping, agriculture, "hospitality" (meaning hotels and restaurants). This isn't anyone's "fault", or, if it is, it's Our fault, We the People. We've forgotten that it's the nature of capitalism; you can hope to charge everyone a premium and go broke, or you can skin your costs down to the bone and make them affordable to Joe and Molly. It's why commercial aviation sucks. It's why WalMart. It's why the guy running that leaf-blower snuck in from Michoacan.

So unless we plan to start paying what we'd need to pay to give all those legal citizen busboys, maids, drywallers, chicken-gutters, and tomato-pickers a living wage the reality of people coming here outside the legal process is going to continue."

Read the whole thing, as the kidz say.

Little Red Riding Hood

--Little Red Riding Hood 

 Hey there Little Red Riding Hood,
You sure are looking good.
You're everything a big bad wolf could want
--Little Red Riding Hood,
Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs 

He asked me for a good night kiss
I said, it's still good day
I would have told him more except
His lips got in the way  
--A Guy is a Guy,
Doris Day

 I moved to another seat
--Jessica Leeds, 74, who alleges that Mr. Trump
groped her over 30 years ago on a plane
________________________

Why must we play these foolish games?

Is the story of Mr. Trump's alleged gropes really news we can use? If our nation's top priority in choosing our President were to achieve parity between the sexes, then, yes. 

However, considering it has been 93 years and counting since the yet-to-be ratified Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) guaranteeing women full and equal rights under the law has stood before the chambers --  I'd say "No".

 Ranger suggests that the press's recent fronting of several woman who allege that Mr. Trump groped them is, in fact, anti-feminist.

The implication is that these women do not know to avail themselves of the legal protection established since the 1960's Civil Rights bills. They live in the age of Girl Power, and yet we are to believe they are June Cleever, too?

Should we believe that they need to be protected by -- whom? Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Clinton?

--The Perils of Pauline (1947)

The trope being exploited is that of Little Red Riding Hood. She is a girl alone in the woods who is accosted by the ravenous Big Bad Wolf. She can be saved on by a lumberjack, a hunter or some such manly man who happens by to save fair maidens in the nick of time.

Mr. Trump is also the Wolfman, and little lady must be saved from his sharp teeth and hairy little palms. 

Really? 

Trump likes and hires pretty women over ugly -- ya say you hadn't heard of such things? Well, look at a few peer-reviewed studies to get your Homo sapien mind right. Woman judged as attractive gain more hires, more advancements, bigger raises.

Mr. Trump practices this and he is adjudicated a dog. Well, then Canis universalis.

Trump says what many think, and is demonized for it. He is the externalization of our id, and we cannot bear it. Hence we let the talking heads attack, and all smile smugly when his name is mentioned: "How can he BE?" we ask, in a disingenuous attempt to shuttle that part of ourselves.

"Ugh -- such a man cannot be President" we say, reflexively, knowing that scores of such men HAVE been presidents (many within the last 60 years). To hoist him on his petard on the basis of old secretly-recorded tapes of private talk and a few instances of alleged groping is skulduggery, and should shame a nation which has far bigger issues on its agenda.

Morality falls under the umbrella "religion", whose separation from matters of state is a hallmark of the United States. This is not Vatican City (thank God.) Sexual harassment falls under EEOC guidelines.

That is the end of the story, until you re-engineer the human. For now, the dance of the sexes plays on.

Tomorrow: Mrs. Obama on Mr. Trump

[cross-posted @ rangeragainstwar.]