The Wall

The construction of hundreds of miles of steel-and-concrete barriers has symbolized futility and waste — a massive, publicly funded undertaking whose payoff in deterring illegal border crossing was unproven at best, ineffective at worst. Now, as crews dynamite, bulldoze and raze their way through pristine canyons, riverbeds, mountains, deserts, and grasslands to gain access to construction sites, Mr. Trump’s wall has become a symbol of wanton environmental destruction.

The folly of the project is glaring. Even as more miles of wall are completed, the number of unauthorized migrants apprehended after crossing the border has spiked in recent months to the highest level in years. Driven by the ravages of pandemic, hurricanes, economic ruin and violence in Central America and Mexico, migrants keep coming, wall or no wall.

For taxpayers, to whom Mr. Trump promised that Mexico would foot the bill — it hasn’t paid a dime — the wall has been a raw deal. The administration managed to devote some $15 billion to construction, an amount that was supposed to be sufficient to build more than 700 miles of barriers. As The Post reported, roughly $3.3 billion of those funds — some diverted from building projects on U.S. military bases worldwide — will remain unused when Mr. Biden takes office. However, of that amount, $700 million will be required to unwind existing construction contracts, leaving savings — if you can call it that — of about $2.6 billion. What a f#in' waste. Source: Washington Post.

The sausage: This large wall poster is comprised of scanned doodles from my sketchbooks and photographs from travels around North America. It's a layered Photoshop file transferred to a large adhesive wall poster.