Our president recently said that he was “totally willing” to shut down the federal government if Congress doesn’t pony up $5 billion for his wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. House Majority Whip Steve Scalese (R-La.) jumped on the Trump Train when he wondered out loud if “Democrats are going to shut down the government because they don’t want to keep Americans safe.”

Give me a break. We have been subjected to this shopworn tirade for almost two years now and it’s getting tiresome.

There is no way to avoid the racism inherent in a policy intended to shut. off the flow of brown people into this country. Whoa, responds the MAGA Multitude, skin color has nothing to do with it. It’s all about security. A country that can’t control its borders is no country at all. Fair point, and it would be an even fairer point if the anti-immigrant hysteria was directed solely at people entering the country illegally. The facts indicate otherwise. Equal attention is being paid to making it more difficult to enter the country legally, which makes illegal entry a last alternative to asylum seekers desperate to escape the violence and economic ruin endemic in their countries of origin.

First a crisis is fabricated, then political gain can be made by exploiting it.

Except it isn’t working out that way.

There is a reason why House Majority Whip Scalese will likely become House Minority Whip Scalese come January. That reason is a mid-term election that saw 8.7 million more Americans vote against the president and his minions’ inflammatory rhetoric than were seduced by it. This resulted in a 40-seat net gain for the opposition party and a changing of the guard in the House of Representatives.

If your dog won’t hunt, maybe it’s time to find another dog.

This is, of course, unlikely to happen anytime soon because the threat being peddled plays well with the MAGA base.

Myself, I have problems seeing shoeless kids in diapers as being the equivalent of Visigoths pounding on the gates of Rome, but then again, I’ve pretty much given up on trying to understand the macho-saturated mental progressions of the Trumpian echo chamber.

What our history demonstrates is that every wave of immigration, from religious dissenters of the 17^th century, to the Scots-Irish, to the Scandinavians, to the Germans, to the Italians, to those of Asian heritage, to those hailing from the Balkans and eastern Europe, each have, in their turn, had to face nativist suspicion and opposition.

And each, within a generation or so, have served to enrich the society of their adopted country many times over the temporary inconveniences associated with their cultural assimilation.

You would think after a couple of hundred years we would get the message.

Do we need secure borders and immigrants entering our country legally? Of course.

Might I suggest that instead of dispatching thousands of American soldiers to the border to string concertina wire and cook turkey dinners for each other, it might make more sense to dispatch a few hundred additional magistrates to that same border to process asylum claims in a more expeditious manner.

For those who meet our requirements, welcome aboard, and where should we send your tax forms?

For those who do not, we do have the right to determine who comes into our country, as harsh as that may seem to some.

And, oh yeah, about Mexico paying for that big beautiful wall…

Promises made, promises swept.

As in, under the rug.