“Mira, el pared viene.” ( Look, the wall comes.)

Si, it is coming.

Donald Trump has promised it, and he will deliver. It is the key of his administration. Everyone is laughing; they are laughing in Washington and in Mexico. But Trump is not a comedian, he does not joke; he wants a wall. He needs this wall the way the Germans needed the wall in Berlin, the way prisons and asylums need walls.

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Our governor — who admires Trump, and fears terrorists have Maine in their gunsights — has this week ordered us to “See something, say something.”

So I will. I see the wall coming, and I must say something.

I see that if bad luck, very bad luck, perhaps celestial punishment, overcomes us because we’ve been sleeping, Trump will win. And when he wins, the first thing he will do is build his wall.

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So what will this wall look like, and who will pay for it?

We know that Mexico, a country that will be too busy delivering taco trucks to Augusta, will not have the money.

So Trump will have to invent sources of income to support his twisted dream:

Will he promote raffles and contests, perhaps even a lottery? Trump knows how to make money, and this is, I imagine, how he will do it.

Once built, there will be tours.

Americans like tours. “Come visit the great Southwestern states that share my wall,” he will say: Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California. Once these states see their coffers swell from tourist dollars, they will, as Americans do, embrace not only the idea, but the great Trump who has enriched them.

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There will be events all along the Great Wall: taco trucks owned by white men, and souvenir booths that sell pieces of the Great Wall left over from construction, and hats that say, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

Eventually, there will be KFC and Burger King booths. There will be “huge” Ferris wheels, where one can ride to the top and maybe see Mexico City.

If the walls are stucco, American graffiti artists will compete for space. On the other side, in the land of Rivera and Frida Kahlo, there will be no art. Paints and brushes are useless to artists who have no work, no money for bread.

The locals and supporters from every state, sunburned men and women in golf shorts and straw cowboy hats, will come to the wall that is great, that will be huge and incredibly wonderful, that is protecting us from the rapists, thieves and undesirables on the other side.

Trump has workers, some suspiciously illegal, who can, for a few bucks, build his wall. Many designs have been suggested: brick, cement or steel. Some may suggest glass, yes, that would be wonderful. Imagine, 10-foot-high glass walls, tinted, mirrored perhaps, so that the men in cowboy hats and their flag draped women could see their reflections, and not have to look at the rapists and drug pushers, along with thirsty women holding babies, looking back at them on the other side.

Glass may not be such a good idea, because he’s going to need, on top, razor wire and sprinkled broken glass to keep those rapists from clamoring over. And who wants to see thirsty, hungry children cut their hands and faces?

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I would imagine that every mile or so, there would be high platforms, higher even then the wall itself, sightseeing platforms fitted with those silver round binocular machines, for a quarter-and-10-minute view. The kind they used to have in San Francisco, where you could search the walls of Alcatraz and see the doomed wave back at you.

Here, on top of Trump’s wall, one could scan the arid landscapes of Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Sonora, and count the skeletons of the lost.

Dogs, there are always dogs — big, snarly dogs. There’ll be armed men, floodlights at night sweeping along the walls when the tourists go home. These are the accouterments of demagogues everywhere.

Perhaps Trump will copter overhead at night, throwing down candy and hats to the hungry children who only want bread.

What, my heart asks me, would Jesus think of all this as He walks along the wall? Jesus remembers Manzanar and Dachau, the wire fences and stink of Aleppo. Jesus has seen it all — Auschwitz, the “trail of tears” of the Cherokee Indians. He remembers Selma.

And I can promise Trump and his choir that sings along with him that Jesus forgives — but never forgets.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.


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