I recently went to see another one of Tom Hank’s extraordinary movies, Bridge of Spies. 
No one watching the film could be untouched by the scenes of the building of the Berlin Wall—first the movement of people from the houses surrounding the area, the concrete blocks and cement delivered by trucks, the barbed wire resting aimlessly about while the building is completed, and finally, the creation of the no-man’s land of barbed wire, machine gun towers, and sniper positions between the last house on the East German side and the wall itself. There it stands in the film, ugly, gray, threatening, and towering over the city. A place where one must pass single-file through Checkpoint Charlie.
Years ago, Robert Frost wrote about walls:
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”
Robert Frost, 1914
The Berlin Wall, of course, had three purposes—the first, physical, to control the lives of East German people; the second, political, to make a comment to the West, to the idea of capitalism, to sere a burning comment into those who look upon it; and finally, the emotional, to shun acceptance of the differences of others and to crush the human spirit seeking freedom and happiness.
Today, we are confronted on a daily basis by the thought of a wall to be built on our southern border, proposed and promoted by Presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“It’s something that can be absolutely done, not done at tremendous cost,” Mr. Trump said on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria.” “You know, it’s been costed by politicians and they came out with these outrageous numbers. As you know, I know how to build. I know how to get it done. We’ll have a great wall. We’ll call it the Great Wall of Trump. We’ll have a great wall and it’ll be — it’ll be actually — it can be a good-looking wall, as walls go, but we will have a really terrific wall and it’ll be done for the right price.” (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/20/donald-trump-great-wall-mexican-border-not-canada/)
Some have called the proposed policy “moronic”. Douglas Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project, writes in Foreign Policy magazine, August 18, 2015, that the Mexican border is perhaps the most patrolled and highly defended border anywhere in the world for two closely connected countries at peace with one another. Judging from the border, you’d never know Mexico was a friendly nation linked to the United States by a treaty agreement worth over half a trillion dollars in annual trade.
He goes on to explain how we got to this position. President Ronald Reagan created a climate of fear concerning terrorism on the Mexican border (incidentally, not the Canadian border), and promoted the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, militarizing the border with Mexico.
Before 1986, migrant and illegal workers generally came to work in the United States, then returned to Mexico with money to invest in their own communities. But once the common border entry points were blockaded at El Paso and San Diego, migrant workers had to spend more time and money, and great risk, to cross the Arizona deserts. What began as an attempt on the part of the U.S. government to discourage border crossing, backfired. Men could no longer take the physical or economic risk of returning to Mexico and then re-crossing into the United States for seasonal work. According to estimates of the Mexican Migration Project, since 1986, more than 7000 Mexican immigrants have died and the average cost of the crossing rose from $650 to $4500. (http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/18/donald-trump-immigration-border/) Workers stayed. Thus began the large number of illegal immigrants.
Perhaps Mr. Trump feels the same sentiment that Carl Sanders’s neighbor voiced in 1914: “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Might we not equally ask the questions Mr. Sanders asked himself at that time:
“…I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.'”
There are other walls in recent history that also seek to separate people, and for every wall there are those who are affected: physically, politically, and emotionally:
The Egypt-Gaza Barrier, built by Israel to purportedly reduce the smuggling of arms, munitions, and militants through tunnels. The wall will be 7-11 kilometers in length and extend 60 feet underground when completed.
The Kuwait-Iraq wall spanning 120 miles.
The Great Wall of Morroco, 1600 miles thorough sand, separating the Moroccan-controlled Southern Provinces controlled by the Polisario Front (a Sahrawi rebel national liberation movement) and northern Morocco. Known by some as the Wall of Shame, it prevents Sahrawi refugees from returning to their homelands.
The Israeli West Bank Barrier, 420 miles, separating Israelis and Palestinians.
The current India/ Pakistan border barrier runs 340 miles and is composed of barbed wire, thermal imagers, and sensors. It is patrolled, lighted, and its lights can be seen from space at night.
Perhaps the most famous of all walls of separation is the Great Wall of China. Built over several centuries by a combined labor force of soldiers, convicts, and commoners, the great wall is said to have taken the lives of over 400,000 workers, most of who were buried within the wall itself.
How many others will be buried because of other walls we humans build?
“…I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.”
Perhaps it is time to also ask: Do fences make good neighbors?
Mending Wall by Robert Frost, 1914, in its entirety:
photo from the New School History Project (http://thenewschoolhistory.org/?ppl=robert-frost)
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’