What the Trojan Horse Can Teach Donald Trump |
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By John Freivalds
Published 2/15/17
For you history challenged people, the Trojan horse was a method that the ancient Greeks used to get into the Kingdom of Troy which was protected by supposedly impregnable walls. The Greeks presented a huge horse to the Trojans as a gift. They hauled it inside the huge walls but it was full of soldiers who then opened the gates and Troy was overrun. Fact or fable from around 600 BC, who knows, but it was the origin of the phrase written by the poet Virgil in 49 BC “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” And of course this was transposed in Appalachian English as “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
All this should be paraphrased "beware of Trump offering a wall (with a negotiated lower construction cost) that will save all the problems of illegal immigration, Mexican cartels smuggling in drugs and terrorists coming into the country." It’s like a 1908 Sears Catalog offering Dr. Beechams’ magic cod liver oil elixir which will solve all your problems. And with Trump these symbolic efforts are to deal with his campaign promises which have little relation to reality.
First of all, the people that the wall is supposed to protect us from are already here. Who do you think picks those strawberries or those apples in Winchester or works 24/7 in processing plants making chicken McNuggets or cleans houses for the rich and famous? Is the laid off Pocahontas, VA coal miner going to drive down to the processing plant and cut up chickens or pick Driscoll strawberries?
As to the drug cartels, wouldn’t the better approach be to eliminate the demand. As long as the demand is there someone will bring the drugs in. We eliminated bootleggers by making alcohol legal and the same efforts are underway with drugs.
No way preventing potential terrorists as they are already in the county. These are not just Islamic jihadists wanting to introduce sharia law waiting at airports around the world to come to the US but anyone who is disaffected. The last terror attacks in the US have been by US citizens who were lone wolves.
Disaffected people will use whatever they can to get back at the US and use their version of the Trojan horse. The 9/11 terrorists (all from our steadfast ally Saudi Arabia) took advantage of what was given to them. They didn’t use F-18s to blow up buildings and kill Americans and disrupt the economy, just ordinary passenger airplanes and box cutters to threaten airline crews. Pencils are still allowed in planes but J. Gordon Liddy, one of the Watergate criminals in the Nixon years, would go on his radio show and tell you how to threaten and kill someone with a sharpened pencil. How many sharpened pencils has the TSA impounded last year? Answer: none.
So how does a terrorist go about disrupting America with bombs, guns, attack aircraft or mines? I was in the Peace Corps in Colombia and observed that when students got mad at the government (always), they would go out and cover downtown streets with roofing nails. Then during the morning rush house there would would thousands of flat tires.
To add to this chaos they would remove manhole covers and unsuspecting motorists would drive into manholes and have broken axles. Since you asked, according to the Western Virginia Water authority, in the city of Roanoke and in Roanoke, Franklin and Botetourt counties, there are 30,000 manholes.
And look what happens when a semi overturns on 1-81. Traffic is paralyzed. So think what would happen here or in Washington DC or New York City with tens of thousands of flat tires. So how come potential terrorists can come into the US from Colombia where they learn how to do this as students? So Stop worrying, the wall will protect us.
Here is what the people are saying!!
Dear Mr. Freivalds,
I enjoyed reading your op-ed this morning regarding Mr. Trump's follies. It's always nice to see an article written by an intelligent and well-informed person who can include a bit of wit as well as insight, rather than a less-informed ideologue trying to sell us a bill of goods.
I would like, however, to give you a brief lesson on proverbs. While the saying, "Beware Greeks bearing gifts" refers to the possibility of hidden dangers, that is not the meaning of, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth." The latter saying cautions against being rude by assessing the value of a gift instead of just graciously accepting it. The saying brings to mind a phrase regarding being "long in the tooth." As horses age, their gums recede, making the teeth appear longer. It's possible to assess the age and therefore the remaining value of a horse by looking in its mouth.
It will be nice if we can educate more people about the dangers of being a Trump follower and allowing the enabling of the fascistic members of Congress without getting the "followers'" backs up and alienating them further from reasonable approaches. Please keep up the good writing to that end.
Best regards,
Ed Kyle