Trump is waffling on the wall.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, those areas did exist, where it was built.  I;m not trying to tell you that the wall was n your head, abaris...only pointing out that it was as porous as any wall is, and that it's value was not in being a wall, but in the psychological effect cuch a wall had on people.  Look, for example...at how large you imagined it to be.  Well, it wasn't...but if you grow up around a portion that gets some love it;s easy to think that it is....that it;s such a complete and utter physical divide that there is no point to go where it doesn't..somehow, exist as you perceive it. Much of the line you referenced, in the map you provided...wasn't a wall at all, just a kill line. Sure as hell -seems- like a wall, though, doesn't it?

That's -exactly- how the wall that will never be built by trumps administration works. It never -has- to be built...it simply needs to be envisioned. It certainly -helps- if you build a portion, like we did -and- like the soviets did, for reference, ofc.

[abaris]

Yes, those areas did exist, where it was built.  I;m not trying to tell you that the wall was n your head, abaris...only pointing out that it was as porous as any wall is, and that it's value was not in being a wall, but in the psychological effect cuch a wall had on people.  Look, for example...at how large you imagined it to be.  Well, it wasn't...but if you grow up around a portion that gets some love it;s easy to think that it is....that it;s such a complete and utter divide that there is no point to go where it doesn't..somehow, exist as you perceive it.

I more or less travelled the length of it and beyond to the other side. Layered defenses, mine fields, guard turrets, searchlights and heavy patrols were more or less state of the art everywhere.

Of course there were instances when someone made it over. But these were a few hundred in a period of over 40 years. And they learned from their mistake. If one attempt was successful, they made sure that a similar attempt would fail.

I'm not debating the value of the Iron Curtain here, I'm mainly debating that it isn't feasible if you put your mind and funds to it.

[The Grand Nudger]

You think it was just a few hundred?  

Between 1950 and 1988, around 4 million East Germans migrated to the West. 3.454 million of them left between 1950 and the construction of the [/font][/color]Berlin Wall in 1961. The great majority simply walked across the border or, after 1952, exited through West Berlin. After the border was fortified and the Berlin Wall was constructed, the number of illegal border crossings fell drastically. The numbers fell further as the border defenses were improved over the subsequent decades. In 1961, 8,507 people fled across the border, most of them through West Berlin. The construction of the Berlin Wall that year reduced the number of escapees by 75% to around 2,300 per annum for the rest of the decade. The Wall changed Berlin from being one of the easiest places to cross the border, from the East, to being one of the most difficult. The number of escapees fell further to 868 per annum during the 1970s and to only 334 per annum between 1980 and 1988. However, escapees were never more than a small minority of the total number of emigrants from East Germany. Far more people left the country after being granted official permits, by fleeing through third countries or by being ransomed by the West German government. During the 1980s, only about 1% of those who left East Germany did so by escaping across the border.[2][/size][/color]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_att...man_border
b-mine

See, again...the iron curtain and subsequent wall had a hell of a psychological effect on you.  You thought it worked alot better than it did. Notice that it doesn't reference cross wall and cross border black markets..which thrived, and goes on to explain how the much larger number than you thought it was... was only a marginal fraction of the overall number of people who fled by going through other points in other countries or by other means. Their wall never worked, and our wall would never work for the very same reasons. The black market would thrive not in spite of it, but because of it..and anyone who wished would either defeat the wall itself...or simply go around it...regardless of the fact that our wall, if built, would be longer than any -actual- wall built along the iron curtain. If we built our 2k mile mexican wall...we'd very soon realize that we required a 5k mile canadian wall....just to stop mexicans. Then, after we built that wall, we'd need 100k miles of coastal wall...mexicans are familiar with the concept of a boat, and even if we could (we can;t) and did build -allll- of this wall, and maintained killzones everywhere.... it still wouldn't stop the drug trade, or mexicans getting over it.

Though I don;t know -why- they'd want to get over it, if we squandered our wealth and promise in such a way in the first place, lol. To get a job building all that wall and shooting at mexicans? Ask yourself this...how many people were crossing the soviet walls, insomuch as they existed...to get in?

[abaris]

See, again...the wall had a hell of a psychological effect on you.

No, it acutally hadn't. I contemplated deleting the 40 years since that was longer than the actual Iron Curtain existed. 1958 was before and the Iron Curtain as well as the Berlin wall were a result of the massive migration that happened before.

So, I'm calling myself stupid now for not deleting the 40 and replace it with a 28, which would be the more appropriate number.

[Aroura]

The value of a wall as-envisioned, is psychological.  That was true in germany, and it was true here, in the states, in this election.

And yet the several layers of it, mine fields and even shot system were very real. If you approached that from any direction it was game over. And if you happened to be lucky, the border patrols got you and they weren't shy of using their guns either.

It wasn't purely psychological.

It's both.  Look, just the thought of it is having a big effect here in the US, so it's certainly psychological as well.  That was kind of my point in my first response.
This is no way negates the very real physical wall you had to deal with.

Jeezus, this is fucked up guys.  Are humans incapable of learning from the mistakes of others, do they have to make them over and over and over again?
Rhetorical.

[abaris]

Jeezus, this is fucked up guys.  Are humans incapable of learning from the mistakes of others, do they have to make them over and over and over again?
Rhetorical.

I fully subscribe to the rhetorical part. We're in a regressive chimp state right now. The whole world pretty much is. All I have seen achieved in my lifetime, the world growing together, all out of the window. We're going back to banging our chests and hunting the neighbouring horde behavior.

[Minimalist]

No wall?




I don't think his ego could take the blow.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The Chinese built a wall around their whole damned civilization. Don't underestimate the power of paranoid xenophobia.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

-and it didn't work for them either, lol.

You know, that's the thing about walls, even as concepts.  People iomagine that dedicated people..say, smugglers or insurgents/invaders/what have you, who want to get something over them see them as an obstacle...they don;t.  The simple presence of a wall indicates to any interested party that this would be a -wonderful- place to breach.  We don't build walls where our presence is the strongest, where our control is the greatest.  The whole point of a wall, if it can be said to have a point, is to cover places where precisely the opposite is true - where other resources are ineffectual, or slim to nonexistent.  Where there is likely to be little, if any, resistance to a breach on the other side.

[abaris]

The Chinese built a wall around their whole damned civilization. Don't underestimate the power of paranoid xenophobia.

Boru

The difference being, the Chinese had reason to, the Romans too by the way. As had the communist block, if we're already going there.