Trump’s wall versus a runaway train

Trump is stubborn and resolute that the wall will be built and the American taxpayers, pretending to be Mexicans, will pay for it. Nancy Pelosi, for eight years as leader of the minority in the House of Representatives, was unable to stop almost all Republican initiatives, unless it required war and military funding. Now she’s the conductor of this train steaming like a bat out of hell.  

Trump has no problem with the government shutdown. Millions of Americans are being affected by this and nearly a million are threatened with losing their homes, unable to pay medical bills (bad enough even when you have health insurance), buy basic goods like food, and maintain any decent standard of life. Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum, right wing extremist from Pennsylvania, has described Trump as having no empathy.

With someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth it is unlikely that someone in Trump’s position would actually know how it feels to live paycheck to paycheck, and very close to homelessness. What Santorum meant to say was that he has no sympathy. He just simply doesn’t care. He even says that the 800,000 furloughed federal employees are Democrats, meaning they’re getting what he believes they deserve.

Compromise is necessary to end the shutdown or a threat so great that one side will have to back down. And both sides have done so in the past over the wall. The Democrats have long supported a border wall with billions of appropriated tax dollars. President Trump is now saying it will be paid by taxpayers but the money from new trade deals with Mexico will offset it. It’s a ridiculous argument but anyone in politics can make the ridiculous look acceptable.

We know where each side stands. Trump is an egomaniac, narcissist, and blunderer. Pelosi and the Democratic leadership in the House are neo-liberals who oppose any serious attempt to deal with the health crisis in America, income inequality, or climate change. But to them, the wall is a moral issue, something that says who we are as a nation, even though they have voted for it in the past and previous Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have spoken of the immigrants coming into the US at the border in no less racist terms than Trump.

In all likelihood, Trump’s actions and words, such as now calling his shutdown a “strike,” will become so toxic that more and more vulnerable Republican senators leading up to the 2020 elections will put pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitchell McConnell to compromise, and for enough votes to override a presidential veto, as Trump is very unlikely to budge. Furthermore, the thought of impeachment, a political, not legal act, long an anathema to Senate Republicans, might just start to look like a viable threat to get out of this shutdown and a way to justify removing this emotionally and cognitively impaired president from his office and from doing more harm to their re-election plans.