Alternatives to a “Big, Beautiful Wall”

Donald Trump has bragged about building a “big, beautiful wall” to protect the southern border. (He has also stated that “nobody builds walls better than me,” a claim the Chinese, East Germans, and Roger Waters would probably dispute.) His budget requests $4.1 billion to begin design and construction, although the Department of Homeland Security estimates that the total cost will be upwards of $21 billion.

Even fans of President Trump think his BBW is a better shtick than it is a solution. Border Patrol agent and Donald Trump supporter Chris Cabrera, who has worked along areas of the border where walls and fences are already present, said as much on a recent episode of This American Life: “We put an 18-foot wall up. The next day, we had 19-foot ladders all over the place. It got so bad.”

So, if President Trump insists on blowing several billion dollars on something that is almost sure to fail, why not bypass “big” and go straight to “crazy”? (That’s kind of his brand anyway.) Below are some thought starters…

A Moat

Everyone loves a moat. It conjures foreboding and the sense that a dragon attack is imminent. It also has a certain European milieu, which is almost as classy as gilding everything in gold leaf. Trump could build a giant robot dragon to patrol the border and attack anyone attempting to cross the moat. (I’m fairly certain that nobody builds giant robot dragons better than Donald Trump.) The dragon should be racist.

Robot Army

Why build one robot dragon when you can build a robot army? Of course, if people know anything, they know that a robot army will eventually turn on its creators, so this should be a low-rent endeavor—nothing too sophisticated. Less T-1000 from Terminator 2 and more Box from Logan’s Run (a robot that looks like the offspring of Destro and an LG refrigerator). Make a few hundred thousand of them and arm them with zip guns. To keep costs low, it would be best to manufacture the robots in Mexico. The robots should be racist.

Destro + LG refrigerator = Box

Human Chain
Other tidbits that aren’t fleshed out but that have potential:

• Wall of Flame

• Self-contained Poison Gas Cloud

• Giant, Irradiated Killer Ant People

•  River of Acid

• Real-life Phantom Zone

If you have any other ideas, please let me know. I would love to compile a list of suggestions to send to President Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security, John Kelly.    

Let’s employ Trump’s army of red-hat warriors to link arms along the southern border, forming a human chain that combines the fecklessness of Hands Across America with the moral clarity of The Human Centipede. It would be ideal if the people are racist, but more vital is their ability to stand for long hours.

Scorpion Pit

This is simply a retread of the moat idea, except we brand the moat as a pit and fill it with scorpions (or snakes or tarantulas or the Breitbart News Editorial Board—anything that’s venomous and devoid of conscience).

Zombie Zone

Observers of American popular culture will argue that the zombie trend is on the wane, but so was overt racism before Trump resurrected it (pardon the pun). Who knows—perhaps the liberal, elite lamestream media is underestimating the affection that white, working-class Americans have for re-animated corpses. Only one way to find out: create a Zombie Zone where the dead are free to eat anyone trying to cross the border illegally. (Like climate change, there is no consensus within the scientific community on the existence of zombies or how human activity may or may not contribute to the raising of the dead—the issue requires more study and debate.) At the very least, America can stick a few million heads on pikes along the border.

Ray Guns

RAY GUNS! Is it a high-tech, dystopian law enforcement solution that combines the brute horror of Judge Dredd with the technological prowess of Silicon Valley? No, because that’s totally unrealistic. Easier to hire a bunch of guys named Ray to stand at the border and shoot anything that moves. (Or we hire people who want the gig and are willing to change their name to Ray—kinda like the Ramones.)

Miscellaneous

People I Have Met Who Are More Qualified Than Donald Trump to Be President

Before the 2016 election, almost every major news outlet and publication, including those with traditionally conservative leanings, endorsed Hillary Clinton. The primary argument was that while some of Hillary Clinton’s actions were ethically suspect, she was informed, qualified, and normal (or at least as normal as people who want to be president can be). Yet over 62 million adults used their democratic vote to elect the first candidate to run as an autocrat because, you know, change.

As rational people begin to re-examine the wisdom of handing the nuclear codes to a man whose brain is the equivalent of a gaggle of angry leprechauns humping an old-timey carousel, I thought it would be a good exercise to come up with a list of people I’ve met who would be more qualified to be president than Donald Trump. On one hand, this is not especially challenging, because Donald Trump is so uniquely unqualified to be president; on the other hand, it’s incredibly challenging, because I avoid going outside and meeting people.

1)    Every adult member of my extended family

Every member of my family is a hard-working American who grew up in a middle class household. Not one of them is an overt racist or a pathological liar who sows discord with every utterance. Every member of my family is capable of feeling emotions not rooted exclusively in either anger or self-pity. And as far as I know, no one in my family is a self-admitted sexual predator. Each one of them already clears the bar America has set for the elected leader of the free (at least for now) world.

2)    My two-year-old daughter

My daughter throws fewer tantrums than our president. She is aware that other people exist and that her actions affect them physically and emotionally—because that is the kind of thing you learn when you are two years old and don’t show signs of being a malignant narcissist. Most importantly, her cognitive abilities are still developing, so it is fair to assume that she will only get better at her job. Donald Trump is 70 and believes global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese to harm American manufacturing.

3)    Every dead-eyed, hollowed-out marketer with whom I’ve had the displeasure of working

Donald Trump is much better at cultivating the image of being successful than he is at actually being successful. In other words, he’s a marketer first and a businessman second. I have been in marketing for over fifteen years, and in that time I have worked with many creative, caring, thoughtful people who believe their work helps turn the wheels of free enterprise. I have also worked with a few petty, soulless narcissists who believe in nothing beyond their own greatness; but even among those wretched souls, not one has been a petty, soulless, narcissist who believes in nothing beyond his own greatness AND who is also a whining, ignorant incompetent. No can have those qualities and remain employed (unless, of course, they are bequeathed a company to sit atop).

4)    Any of my friends

I don’t have many friends. The friends I do have I see very infrequently—so infrequently, in fact, that the people I refer to as “friends” probably refer to me as “a colleague” or “an acquaintance” or “who?”. Be that as it may, they are all intelligent, empathetic folks who have a basic appreciation for civil society—probably because, unlike certain individuals who are handed a fortune that they leverage to buy their way out of trouble, my friends are forced to live within society’s rules and general constraints. None of my friends have ever openly praised murderous dictators (and my friends live in New York City, a sanctuary for eight million pinko commie liberals trying to destroy America). Also, all of my friends are human beings who acknowledge the basic humanity of other human beings, because most people make an effort to not be totally evil.

5)    Me

I have no experience in government or the military, which is now apparently an asset rather than a liability. (Who would’ve thought people would favor someone to have complete authority over something in which said person has no experience?) I have very little charisma—so little charisma that my wife’s friend has introduced himself to me at least six times over the past eight years with a friendly “nice to meet you.” I’m not popular in any social circle, not even my own (see number four, above). And finally, in case it’s not already painfully obvious, I don’t think very highly of myself. Yet I believe I would make a better president than Donald Trump, largely because I believe almost anyone who’s halfway intelligent, has some sense of empathy, and doesn’t subscribe to wild conspiracy theories would make a better president than Donald Trump.

After spending several days compiling this list, I have come to the conclusion that anybody with whom I can remember having a coherent, informed conversation is more qualified to be president than our current president—most likely because they were capable of having a coherent, informed conversation. The saddest revelation here is that my situation is unremarkable. As previously stated, I’m a mediocre individual. There are of millions of Americans who are just as painfully average as me, all of whom surround themselves with generally competent people who don’t live in their own self-imposed cocoon of delusional grandiosity, creating a pool of tens of millions of people more qualified to be president than Donald Trump.

Kids, the next time an adult gets down on one knee and looks you in the eye and says, “You could be President of the United States,” it may not be an affirmation intended to encourage you onward, but rather an assessment of your qualifications right now.