Xenophobia

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Xenophobia: dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries.
  
So, your government decides they can sell a dislike of certain people, people they characterize as rapists and drug dealers bringing disease.  In other words, savages.  

How do they solve that?  Why, build a wall of course to secure their fortress country from ... Mexicans!


Of course, the way we are behaving, the Mexicans may be the people demanding and building the wall pretty soon to keep us out!  Then, Trump will be right, they really will pay for it.  They might think it's a bargain.

But, first, they will probably have to remove the wall that has been built between our countries, because this one is falling over.


And, they might want to rework the design.  When a Mexican congressman can climb it as a demonstration, well ...



I mean, when an 8-year old girl can climb it!


When it comes to making America great again, maybe our administration is remembering the one wall we built that actually did keep us separate from the people we decided to fear.



That is a mountain of Bison skulls from a picture taken in 1870.  American expansion required the defeat of indigenous people occupying the land who had to be seen as savages to be feared.  Some calculate their population pre-invasion at 15 million people.  Those people relied upon the land and its bounty, so the best method of defeat was the destruction of their food, shelter, and clothing source.  That was the American Bison, so we killed them from trains with rifles.  One herd ranging in Kansas was 10 miles wide and 100 miles long!  It was a ruthless strategic masterstroke at a level today's administration can only dream of.  By the end, only 300 thousand of these people remained alive and performed in Wild West shows or lived penned on reservations.

Comparatively, today's wall is a laughing stock and somehow I don't think all of the American people are fully sold on the threat from the Mexican people.  I expect the Canadians to do a much better job at keeping  savages contained south of their border!

Please check out my other blog mates' takes on the same topic brought to us by Sanjana at their blogs, Padmum, Raju, Ramana, Sanjana and Shackman!

Comments

  1. Ramana RajgopaulJune 5, 2020 at 5:55 AM

    Very interesting history. I knew something about the bison killing but the magnitude is simply mind blowing. We have tried to fence our border with Bangladesh with more or less the same result as your wall.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Old FossilJune 5, 2020 at 11:43 AM

      The destruction of the native population here had been underplayed for a long time. We grew up playing cowboys and indians as a healthy pastime, but it was truthfully genocide on a horrific scale.

      In Kansas, we have learned how fired the bison are for the Plains. They do not require the care cattle do and for carnivores, it is healthier meat. As so many have come to realize, our wanton destruction in expansion poisoned us deeply in the process.

      Delete
  2. Shackman June 5, 2020 at 2:53 PM

    There is very little that beats Bison for taste and healthiness-and as you said, we started this fight in the sixties and are trying to bring it home in our seventies.
    Damn are e slow.

    ReplyDelete

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