Hey, President Trump! Hey, Congress! Listen up, you dolts.
Stop acting like toddlers in a playpen. Stop posing for the cameras. Pass a dang short-term spending bill, for maybe a month, with a nominal amount for at least some border wall construction, and be done with it.
Stop further roiling the already spooked financial markets. Stop the insults and the outrageously idiotic lines in the sand. Stop polluting our Christmas spirit, fergoshsakes. Act like adults, get the job done for the next month, and get out of the way.
Does anybody in Washington care about anything other than immediate political advantage? Does anybody care what the constant chaos does to the body politic, to the mood of the country, to civil society?
Plenty of leading, liberal Democrats have supported authorization of, or funding for, a wall or secure border fence, on plenty of occasions. President Trump won election by promising a wall. Elections have consequences; the people should be heard.
An obvious compromise would be to appropriate, say, $2 billion of the $5 billion Trump has requested, for use as a “pilot project” in a well-chosen area of the border, to see how well it works. Trump could say he got the wall started. Democrats could say they care about border security but want to keep the cost down and want to make sure it’s effective.
Both sides can say they don’t want Christmas to be marred by petty political discord.
Both sides could come back in a month, when the new Congress has taken shape, and fight it out then. In the meantime, both sides should recruit the most level-headed, reasonable people available, and have them spend the next month making personal connections, negotiating in good faith, and re-learning how to compromise.
It’s time to step back from the precipice. Ideology shouldn’t be absolute. The nation’s political fabric is being shredded. It’s time to pull out needle and thread, and start the mending process.
Now.
