President Joe Biden should call off construction crews gathering at the southernmost edge of California's coastline to erect a border wall that epitomizes Trump's dystopian vision.
The planned double-layered, 30-foot-tall steel wall would create another heartbreak at a historic site for binational unity, Friendship Park, inaugurated 52 years ago by First Lady Pat Nixon. Back then, just a few strings of barbed wire separated the U.S. and Mexico. Archival footage of the park's 1971 inauguration shows the first lady disturbed by fence on the mesa and asking that it be taken down so she could hug and shake hands with people in Mexico. "I hope there won't be a fence too long here," she said. The dream was for a place symbolizing the close relations of two neighbors, not unlike Peace Arch Historical Park on the U.S.-Canada border.
That old footage is a window into an alternate universe, far from the Republican Party's vicious rhetoric about the border now. It's also a reminder of what the GOP could be, even as Democrats prove to be disappointing on border issues.
