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A Wall, Then

Once upon a time, when I was middle-aged and green under the academic boughs, I taught ethics in a midwestern college.  It was in the 1970s--before and after--when the Cold War was not cold.  East Germans had built a big, beautiful wall along their border with West Berlin.

[Historical Note:  East Germany is not the same as Mexico:  there is an ocean of difference between them. A wall, though, is pretty much a wall, anywhere.]

 When our discussions turned to matters of war and peace, cold and hot, sometimes we got bogged down with well-established, life-long political and religious and social convictions, so to loosen up the crystalline points of view, I proposed that instead of a nuclear arsenal large enough to sterilize the whole earth, we build, not a wall, but an arsenal of catapults along both coasts to keep us free from communists coming our way as the dominoes of world domination fell toward us.  I suggested that the catapults be armed with great gobs of green cow shit.  Nothing, I argued, was more discouraging to an ideological invader than being hit, square on, with a great gob of green cow shit.  And . . .  and . . . there was no radioactive fallout!  

It was a compelling argument to students who knew a lot about fences and cow barns and communists coming over the horizon.  It did, at least, provide a big, beautiful gate into the discussion.

That was almost fifty years ago.
I could not hold such a discussion today.
We do not come to the debate
from the same common ground.

Today there are too many people
who do not know bull shit
when it hits them in the face.

A wall, then.



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