Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Just Another Figure of Speech In The Metaphor


If you look at The Daily Beast, GOP Senators are ready for Trump to declare a "national emergency" over his wall.

However, according to WaPo (via Raw Story; paywalls suck), McConnell sez:

“I’m for whatever works, which means avoiding a shutdown and avoiding the president feeling he should declare a national emergency.” 

Now the logical question is:  which is it?  And the answer is:  both and a little bit of neither.

According to DB, GOP Senators don't love the idea of a national emergency, but they'll take it if that's what it takes to end this nonsense without them being in the position of overriding a Trump veto (that part is implied, never stated).  The presumption is this would be Pelosi's flowers on the border (a lovely image):  Trump declares victory, and the government goes on its merry way, having finally left this stinking turd of an issue on the roadside behind it.  (Trump has been bragging for two years that his wall is being built, so he'd just declare that we've always been at war with Eurasia and move on.)

Except, of course, the courts are likely to ball that up in short order; which is fine, because who really cares if Trump gets his wall or not?  This whole fight isn't about the wall, anyway, but about governance.  The Democrats stated plainly and to anyone who would listen that they couldn't give in to Trump's idiotic (and baseless and unfounded) demand to "Build a Wall and Crime will Fall!"  In that, they were right.  Now comes Lindsay Graham saying the issue should be tied to the debt ceiling, because that'll put the fear of God into the Democrats and make 'em give Trump his wall; but that raises the same objection, for the same sound reasons.  That idea, too, is getting some support among Senate Republicans; anything but voting against Trump, apparently.

So do the Senate Republicans really care about this damned wall?  No.  Does it matter if the wall is ever real, ever concrete or steel slats or even just flowers?  No.  The wall is irrelevant and immaterial; all that matters is Trump declare himself "Winner!" and Anne Coulter and FoxNews not point out to him how naked an Emperor he is, again.  And then this whole road apple can be nothing but a memory in the rear view mirror.  Would that mean the wall is being built, contracts being let, land being appropriated, immigrants and asylum seekers and drug mules facing finally the impenetrable barrier keeping their brownness from our white country?

Who cares?  (And:  no, anyway).  So the wall is not now, and never will be in the future, a wall.

It's just a metaphor.  And metaphors are better left to literature; messy bastards when they get loose in real life.  Helluva way to govern, too.  A complete clusterfuck in its own right.  The system is not saving us; so what will?

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