“A man’s at odds to know his mind, because his mind is all he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he don’t want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there.” — Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
I’ve told Mrs. Basura that we need to make every effort to spend as much money as possible during our month in Mexico, beginning in about three weeks.
The good people of that country (which, by the way, is not a “shithole” country; it’s not even a “shithouse” country) need to enhance revenues, for plans are moving forward to Build That Wall. And who is going to pay for it? All together now: MEXICO!
The price is looking right now like it’s going to be $25 billion. Twenty-five billion dollars. Converted, using an exchange rate from last year, that would be 500,000,000,000 pesos. That’s 500 billion pesos. Wow. That’s a lot of dinero. Bigly!
Mrs. Basura is going to have to eat some lobster at Jeanie’s. Better yet, at Rolandi’s. Maybe buy some knick-knacks.
Mexico is not a rich country. If the move toward legalizing marijuana continues to gain momentum, another source of wealth will be reduced, or lost. That money doesn’t go directly into the governmental coffers, but those cartels spend it lavishly, I understand. Pablo Escobar (see Killing Pablo, by Mark Bowden) had his own zoo, a gold .45 caliber pistol, planes, helicopters, boats, cars, and motorcycles. Some of that wealth must have trickled down from the job creators, right?
Twenty five billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, I know. The first estimate of the cost was eight billion, but that’s been revised.
That’s a lot of money, any way you look at it, but remember, The Wall has to be a tall wall, so no one can go over it. And a strong wall, so no one can go through it. It will need deep foundations, so no one can tunnel under it. And a wide wall, so no one can go around it.
Make no mistake about it: The Wall will have to go right through the middle of the Rio Grande. That’s not our Grand River. It’s the long river that separates all those rapists (and some good people, I’m sure) from all us predominantly white folk.
Don’t be misled by that by that photo of the rotund, middle-aged Mexican lawmaker, Braulio Guerra, sitting all by himself on top of a prototype wall section. Maybe he was more agile than we might guess. Maybe he used a ladder, but that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?
This much I can say (imagine a gesture, with thumb and index finger forming a circle, and moving upward).
This much I can tell you. SAD! SAD!! SAD!!!
