The wall

In 2016, a candidate for president of the United States made a campaign promise. He was going to build a wall.

The first time he said it, the crowd’s response was tepid. It wasn’t because most of the folks in the crowd didn’t support the idea, they just didn’t want to dip their hands in their pocket to pay for it. They didn’t want their government doing the honors either.

The young folks in the crowd used the calculator on their smartphone to do the math on how much of their paychecks they’ll have to give up.

The older folks broke out their slide rule.

The politician’s campaign manager did the math by counting on his fingers and toes. He quickly ran out of fingers and toes.

Using a weird mixture of magic dust blended with bullshit, the politician added, “and Mexico will pay for it!”.

The crowd went wild.

Calculator app was closed. Slide rule was discarded. Campaign manager put his socks and shoes back on.

Someone else will pay for it! Problem solved.

When asked if Mexico would pay for it, the Mexican president responded in Spanish, “no”. The English translation to that is still “no”. Yet somehow, something was lost in translation.

That “no” that failed an English translation has translated perfectly into a government shutdown.

And America is paying for it.