The Berlin Wall and Trump's Wall

Yesterday Fox New personality Monica Crowley tweeted a picture of herself standing in front of one of the remnants of the Berlin with the caption "At the Berlin Wall last week. Walls work." 

I saw this on the commuter train on my way home and almost started screaming. The Berlin Wall worked for almost forty years, if by "worked" you mean killed people, broke apart families, and assisted in stabilizing a horribly repressive police state. As Crowley showed her smug picture, she probably wasn't thinking of the photo below:

This is Peter Fechter, an 18 year old East German shot trying to climb the wall in 1962, and left bleeding on the ground for almost an hour by the DDR's border police. He died, all for the crime of wanting a better life. At least 137 others did, too. To speak of this monument to oppression positively is truly, truly disgusting.

Of course, being a Fox News personality, Crowley's problem might be just as much pig ignorant stupidity as lacking a soul. She might not be aware that the Wall was built to keep people in, not keep them out. She just might be stupid enough that she thinks the Wall was built by the West to hold off the Communist menace or something. 

But now that I think about it, I'm not so sure. By using the Berlin Wall so maladroitly, I think she may have admitted something I've long suspected: many Trump supporters want to see Mexican immigrants shot and bleeding out in front of their beloved wall. These are the same people, after all, who defend the police ever time an unarmed person of color gets shot to death by them. These are the same people who took George Zimmerman's side. These are the same people who live behind the suburban walls of redlining and school districting. (Or in the case of suburban Detroit, an actual wall.) They want walls, both corporeal and legal, between them and people of color, and they want men with guns prepared to shoot anyone who might cross over. This basic fact lies at the center of the dark heart of Trumpism, not trade, not globalization, not nostalgia. Don't forget it.