Trump is waffling on the wall.

[The Grand Nudger]

As if a fantasy based interpretation of how the world is would ever stop a trump supporter, lol. We underfunded the fence the last go round too...but ofc the main point of it was grift, as ever...so....as GDub liked to say ...

Mission Accomplished.

(and just to be "fair and balanced" our Buddy Obama was in on it too, actually declared the damned thing "basically completed" over time, over budget, and under specs, as useless as they were to begin with....lol)

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Only idiots fell for the wall shtick.  It was never feasible in the first place.

Have to go with abaris on this one. I spent a significant portion of my adult life in the city where concrete, steel, and barbed wire walls separated neighborhoods.

Boru

[abaris]

But our southern border is a lot longer than the Iron Curtain, and has more natural barriers preventing full on wall building as well.

You think?



As compared to.

[Aroura]

Huh, look at that.

Did I mention I was naive? I mean, I knew it was a long wall, I watched a piece on the bits still left and how far apart they were, but having never BEEN to Europe, I never really thought about how long that must actually be.

How did it go over mountains and stuff?

And stop scaring me! I mean, I know he retracted the wall statement now, but he promised a lot of terrible things that he's yet to retract.

[Excited Penguin]

Huh, look at that.

Did I mention I was naive?  I mean, I knew it was a long wall, I watched a piece on the bits still left and how far apart they were, but having never BEEN to Europe, I never really thought about how long that must actually be.

How did it go over mountains and stuff?

And stop scaring me!  I mean, I know he retracted the wall statement now, but he promised a lot of terrible things that he's yet to retract.

That's a conceptual wall,  not an actual one. It divided the spheres of influence of the Soviet Union from those of the West.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's probably a little misleading as to scale if we reference coastline (as iron curtain maps do) unless we wanted to imagine that our coastline is also, defacto, part of the wall.  But, for reference....the ICT (iron curtain trail) when completed, will run 4,7k miles along the coarse of where the conceptual iron curtain was (not all of the wall was built, different entities built different parts, and they were all in different states of completion).  Our southern border....by land only, is around 2k. Our border with canada is 5k miles...and we have 95k miles of shoreline.

If I had to compare the iron curtain to our little hypothetical wall, all things considered, I'd call them roughly similar projects in scale and difficulty. I'd expect them to be about as porous as each other as well, lol.

(abaris can be forgiven for imagining europe and it;s walls to be larger than it/they is/are, particularly relative to the us. Euros have been imagining that their stuff is larger than it is for some time now...that;s how they ended up with all of those "appropriately sized" clowncars they love so much. )

[Excited Penguin]

Only Germany had an actual wall built - because it happened to be shared by the Soviets and the West simultaneously.

[abaris]

How did it go over mountains and stuff?

It didn't need to. Coastal patrol were all that's needed to secure the shores and mostly impenetrable mountains didn't need much of it either. But everywhere else it was at least layers of fences and barbed wire, mine fields and even shot systems. And light systems, lots of them.

I remember one night spent at a Hotel of the german city of Fulda. In 1979, I believe. The rotating searchlights from the border were that strong that I had a hard time finding any sleep.

[The Grand Nudger]

Only Germany had an actual wall built - because it happened to be shared by the Soviets and the West simultaneously.

Most of it was what you might call a long term improvised defensive line.  The sort that infantry are familiar with building as temporary and then improving upon for so long as the line remains static.  Starts out as footprint shallows. Then foxholes. Then trenches...maybe you drop down some wire, plant a few tank traps...toss out a mine or two...over time it builds up, and you have to have -something- for the folks manning it to do, lol. Just about everyone who builds these walls for any legitimate reason knows that "walls-walls" have long been eclipsed by tech and tactics for both military and criminal applications.  Even the walls at our prison, today...more to keep us from having to look (and keeping them from looking out) than for any practical purpose not better addressed by another form of obstruction or even earthwork.

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. Obviously, you don;t even have to build it. For whatever reason, just thinking about it works on that level. Anyone can tell you on which side of a -hypothetical- wall they live. The wall, as such, may only be, at some points, a redline on a map....that corresponds to a seemingly empty field...but everyone knows where it is......they know the kill line, even if it's unmarked.

[abaris]

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.