During the last week of August, The Washington Post reported that President Trump told aides to “fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules.” He reportedly added that he would pardon any “potential wrongdoing.” Although acknowledging that an administration official insisted the president was only joking about pardons, the report reveals the extent of the president’s desperation to secure a victory before the 2020 presidential election. A week after the Post story, the U. S. Department of Defense authorized diverting $3.6 billion to fund 11 wall projects along the Mexican border.
Egotistical rulers like Trump often have grandiose architectural plans. Hitler had his “Germania,” his name for a new redesigned Berlin that would dazzle the world. Mao Zedong had his “10 Great Buildings” built in Beijing 1959. Stalin had his never-built Palace of Soviets, which was to be higher than the Empire State Building, and later, Moscow’s seven skyscrapers known as the “seven sisters.” As a candidate and heretofore as president, Donald Trump has been consumed by his dream of building “a great, great wall” on the United States–Mexico border. After announcing this when declaring his presidential candidacy in mid-2015, he added that “nobody builds walls better than me,” and that he would “have Mexico pay for that wall.” Continue reading “Trump’s wall and the aggrandizement of despots”