A friend of mine told me today that 60 Minutes ran an episode on Sunday about a gap in the border wall near Jacumba Hot Springs. Here's what it looked like:
The implicit question from the 60 Minutes piece is, why can't the government fill this four-foot gap "between the 30-foot steel border fence and rock"? How much can it cost to fill up four feet?
By an odd coincidence, I can explain. Four years ago I drove down to the border to take pictures at sunrise, and I noticed that very gap. It attracted my attention because it made the whole fence seem kind of pointless. To see why, here's the picture I took in 2020. It shows a wider view than 60 Minutes did:
As you can see, it's not a four-foot gap between "fence and rock." The fence stops where this hill starts. There's no fence over the entire hill, and it's pretty obvious that climbing up and down that hill would be easy even if the fence were extended. The only way to close it off is to complete the fence all the way up and over the hill.
Why haven't they done that? Beats me, but I assume that building the fence across steep, rocky terrain is challenging in some non-obvious way.
There are lots of rocky hills like this along the border, some them considerably bigger than this one—but still accessible to anyone willing to do a bit of climbing. With enough money I suppose you could still build a fence over any obstacle along the border, but it wouldn't be easy.
How about a moat, about a mile wide and a hundred feet deep from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific?
It would have the added benefit of bypassing the Panama Canal and creating a huge new amount of waterfront real estate.
That would be a 7 Wonders of the World project. Go for it. Anything that turns that much Texas land into water works for me.
Hey, I’ve got a great idea for Florida too:
https://youtu.be/2IDwpTABJG4?si=3_Rly7JIm5xrenGF
We could fill the moat with sharks with fricken laser beams!
I'm imagining the builders who installed the fence, knowing it was obviously pointless. But a job's a job.
Now, why the fence wasn't built around the base of the hill, I dunno.
No logic needed here. The fence seems to be a way to funnel money to people who support Republicans. Wait, there's a big gap in the fence? No problem.
Yes. Completing the fence is not essential to the little middle school play that is the gop pretending to oppose immigrants while at the same time making it easier for 14-year-old immigrants to work full time dangerous jobs without adequate pay or protection …. Annnnnnnd scene.
I don't know where this gap is specifically, but one might guess that either that would go on to Mexican land or private property and the feds have not seized that land yet through eminent domain
They probably let the fence contracts out by the mile. All the easy miles were done first, leaving the hard miles for later. I am reminded of the story of the nuclear powered bomber the US was trying to build in the 50’s. It would fly two week missions to avoid being caught on the ground in case of a nuclear attack. The team developing the menu of food the crew finished on time, the team developing the nuclear jet engines never did.
Well, assuming the "wall" or whatever the fuck that thing is, is 10' tall, you probably need a footing at least half as tall below ground. And rather than posts that "wall" requires a continuous pour within which sections are just apparently stuck into the concrete foundation, well, you're asking someone to excavate through 5 feet of solid rock or mostly rock, about a foot wide the entire length of the hill of rocks. You can't just bring a bulldozer or an excavator up a rocky hill, if you think that's all you need.
That's a change order of a few million dollars. And that's assuming you can find a subcontractor who is willing to do that work, forced to bring and remove their equipment everyday because if they left it out, it'd be gone by the morning.
Who's dipshit idea was it to build a fucking wall, anyway?
*whose
Whose dipshit idea? The question answers itself: some dipshit.
Kind of makes me wonder what would have happened if the native Americans had thought to build a wall. I can imagine the caravans of white people (oops, I mean wagon trains carrying pioneers) coming up to a wall:
“Gorshn, a wall! What are we gonna do?”
“Guess we’ve got no choice ‘ceptin to turn back”
“Dang! But I guess you’re right. Nothing else we can do.”
" Somebody's gotta go back and get a shit-load of dimes!"
>With enough money I suppose you could still build a fence over any obstacle along the border, but it wouldn't be easy.
I wonder what the generation that built the railroad would have thought of us.
I can imagine any number of explanations for these gaps, from government incompetence to environmental considerations to contracts that have yet to be set in motion. Learning the truth would certainly be interesting. But I’ll tell you one thing: Seeing the Left crow over government incompetence ultimately plays into the hands of the Right.
Also, gaps hardly render the project ridiculous and ineffective. Shouldn’t it be far easier to patrol the gaps than the entire border? And, in the short run, it’s probably cheaper.
Does the wall make sense? I honestly have no idea. But this self-satisfied dunking looks lazy to my eyes.
"I wonder what the generation that built the railroad would have thought of us."
Probably a variation of one or two things:
1) They'd look upon us with astonishment and wonder--beings with technology to see around the planet and traverse in hours on a whim journeys that would take them weeks, most of whose occupations would be incomprehensible to them.
2) They'd wonder why in god's name we're wasting so much effort building a fence in a blasted wasteland. Esp. when the vast majority of people enter the US on those astonishing highways or airplanes, and not by drudging their way through said blasted wasteland.
Perhaps they would have thought: How incredible to be brought back from the dead! Or: I need to tell people what death truly is. Or, probably: Behold the awesome power of self satisfaction when intentionally missing the point.
"Seeing the Left crow over [Trump-driven] incompetence ultimately plays into the hands of the Right."
How do you figure that?
I would have thought, in fact did think, that every time a government project fails, the party that claims that government is the problem gains strength.
So, all the anti-govt types have to do is create an endless number of failed projects and they'll gain limitless strength? Maybe throw a few lost wars into the mix and become truly omnipotent!
I don't think it works that way.
Good idea! We should follow the lead of our railroad building ancestors and bring in thousands of underpaid Chinese immigrants to build the wall .
Yeah! Great conclusion! Please provide the general principle you are championing so that I can apply it everywhere.
Chinese on the west, Irish on the east, Mexicans in the middle -- that's how the railroad was built. That's why you find names like Carlos O'Kelly.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure having Mexicans build a wall in America, intended to keep Mexicans in Mexico, is going to work out all that well.
There are reportedly over a thousand tunnels between Gaza and Rafa, within which Hamas (and Gazans in general) have unfettered (for a fee, that is) access and commerce. That border is just 128 miles long. The US-Mexico border is nearly 2000 miles long but doesn't have thousands of tunnels -- why do you suppose that is?
The tighter the border control, the greater the demand for unsanctioned flows.
Are we really going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a system that shifts flow from sanctioned crossings to unsanctioned crossings?
One thousand tunnels for a border 128 miles long. and 128 miles times 5,280 feet equals 675,840 feet. That’s about 676 feet between tunnels. A football field is 300 feet. So roughly two football fields separate each tunnel.., Right. Does that pass your sniff test?
You haven't seen the photos of these tunnels all laid out one next to another? Don't mock if you can't be bothered to do a simple search.
For a tunnel that's no more than 20-25 feet wide? That would absolutely pass the sniff test.
My college dorm had three easily accessible underground tunnels in a single city block. They were dug with early 20th century technology. Trivially easy.
I wonder what the generation that built the railroad would have thought of us.
They probably would have thought that we are stupid to construct a wall along an arbitrary line like an international border rather than planning a route based upon ease of construction.
Shouldn’t it be far easier to patrol the gaps than the entire border?
Since a fence without patrols is entirely useless, you still have to patrol the entire border.
> They probably would have thought that we are stupid to construct a wall along an arbitrary line
Proof or are you pulling that out of your nether region?
> Since a fence without patrols is entirely useless
In my neck of the woods, most metros have a trivial barrier to discourage people from jumping over it to avoid needing to pay. In fact, I see this in many countries. Are you claiming this discourages exactly no one, i.e. that it is ‘entirely useless’?
"Proof or are you pulling that out of your nether region?"
Wait, you want proof of what our raised-from-the-dead ancestors would think? How does that work?
"…building the fence across steep, rocky terrain is challenging in some non-obvious way."
The MAGAt mind, as cheap as it is, cannot envision completion. OTOH, those of us who are not cultists can see and marvel at the stupidity, small cultist minds grasping at any bumpersticker to follow their "leader".
All I know is that I'm still laughing about a picture I saw recently where milk crates were stacked to make a staircase to the top of the fence. Just walk to the top and then a rope to the bottom on the USA side.
Throughout the course of history walls haven't worked. They didn't keep out the Mongol hordes, they didn't keep East Germans from trying to be free and they didn't keep Britannia safe from the hoards invading from the north.
The walls are more a sign of desperation than power. A better way is to fix Central America so there is a larger buffer between the US and the problems in South America. Fixing includes making conditions in the continent prosperous enough for all that we don't have hordes desperately attempting dangerous journeys.
There have to be lots of gaps (or at least gates) in the fence where dozens of desert washes cross the border which turn into flash floods when it rains.
This is not a new issue at this location.
People were kvetching about it 7 years ago
https://www.10news.com/news/46-miles-of-san-diego-countys-60-mile-border-with-mexico-has-a-fence
what is different now?
To paraphrase Psalm 146, "Put not your faith in Fences."
FWIW I have driven down in that area and the area is crawling with Border Patrol agents. I doubt it's a major crossing point given you have to scale a hill and the Border Patrol is watching you do it.
Let's always remember what Reagan said: "take down that wall!" The GOP is the party of building the wall now. I suppose it has to be somewhere. If it isn't across Europe it may as well be across the American continent.
Seriously, there is some sad irony in this GOP (Reaganite?) project of walling off the country.
I thought when you said, remember what Reagan said, you were going to quote, "rather than building a wall, let's open the border both ways."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmgPp_nlok
Mexico ran out of money.