$5.7 Billion Would Not Be Enough for Trump’s Wall

There is hardly anything else that physically and materially epitomizes Donald Trump’s doctrine better than the U.S. president’s desire to erect a wall along the border with Mexico.

In this case, the wall has ceased to be made of concrete, steel and sensors and has been transformed into a flag: the ideology’s flag. Will this wall, if ever constructed, become the biggest transparency of Trump’s ideology? And more importantly, what would this wall be a reference to?

If we know anything about the Republicans in the U.S., including the fact that they chose to nominate Trump to run for president, it is that they do not like inflating the budgets of federal structures, with one important exception, however: those government departments that are responsible for security. Therefore, the expenditures related to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense are rather tolerated by the U.S. right wing, unlike payments for social services (such as health care, for example).

To put it bluntly, the Republicans and Trump would not “throw away” some $5.7 billion in tax money for the construction of a wall that they are not convinced is necessary. And we’re not even talking here about the fact that in 2018, there was a registered 23 percent increase in the number of subjects detained along the southern border with Mexico that tried to enter the United States illegally (521,000 people in 2018 compared with 416,000 people in 2017).

In another aside, it appears that the immigrants – who I highly doubt like the U.S. president, a man that boosted his party’s midterm election campaign with rhetoric against the very same immigrants – don’t mind living in the country that Trump runs. The problem here is that all those trespassing illegally at the border already violate the laws and sovereignty of that country. If the first contact between an immigrant and the host country is manifested in the immigrant’s breach of the law, therefore, what course of action can he or she then be expected to take within the boundaries of that state? Not to mention that the issue of human trafficking and drug trafficking along the southern border of the United States with Mexico would be impossible without taking into account the same illegal channels.

Regardless of the Democrats’ opposition to the wall, the problem of illegal immigration along the southern border has already been recognized. Otherwise, the protection facilities that run along approximately one-third of the border with Mexico would not have been built (running for approximately 654 miles of the 2000-mile border). But the possible construction of the wall – the reason that the partial shutdown of the United States federal government is continuing – is not simply a budgetary disagreement between Trump and the Democrats, but much more. It is the engagement of values in diametrically different political vectors.

That is why the issue of the wall is important, regardless of whether it is built or not in the end. Trump’s wall is already a symbolic monument, marking the revision that occurs in relation to the space we call “trans-Atlantic.” Namely, the trans-Atlantic space was carpeted by one ideology over the last three decades , that of extrovert liberalism.

It is extrovert because it destroyed walls and borders, in particular, that of the individual, of the family and of the state. The scattered self, the relative meaning of the family and shared states was the global project of liberalism. For this purpose, the extrovert liberalism had to crack down on all passionarity, ethnic nuclei, culture and religion – because the same were viewed as conveying differences and hence conflicts.*

But it was as if someone had decided to merge the football teams of Levski Sofia and CSKA Sofia into a third entity, hoping that instead of fighting, the fans of both teams would address each other with words. No matter how noble something is, when it is simply foolish, it can cause more harm than good. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

But, the passionarity nuclei are a source of something else: of identity. Man is ultimately a set of components, which do not succumb to being reformatted. Yes, of course, each person may acquire one or more habits. Yes, of course, the expansion of the cultural horizon is always useful. But, you cannot teach yourself to have another identity.

Nevertheless, extrovert liberalism believes in the creation of one broad and open-minded man, who will be socially and culturally promiscuous, who will be the same everywhere because everywhere will be the same. And if there is an identity crisis today, it is precisely a reaction to the experience of programming a new man, perhaps, of a new Aryan.

But if a person is a citizen of the world, he or she is a citizen of nowhere, as British Prime Minister Theresa May said not long ago. That is why we have started the discussion about building walls again. Extrovert liberalism is met by the revision of the introvert conservatism. With respect to the latter, a person is not a universal character, but he or she is unique, because he or she is created by God. The family is not something relative but rather a boat used to fight the waves of life. And the state is not just a bureaucratic apparatus but rather a composition of cultural and historic layers.

The self, the family and the state are three private territories (those of the individual, relatives and fellow citizens, respectively), whose boundaries must not be crossed illegally. If this happens, walls will appear along the borders. The amount of $5.7 billion might otherwise be a lot of money, but not in this case.

*Editor’s note: Passionarity is a concept introduced by the late Russian historian Lev Gumilev, which can be explained as the level of vital energy and power characteristic of any given ethnic group.