I saw a headline yesterday evening: “House Republicans propose $10 billion for Trump’s border wall.” Now estimates that I have seen predict that a wall would cost 15-25 billion dollars to build the wall, and that the wall, once built, would cost 750 miliion per year to maintain. $10 billion would be a mere down-payment.

But the House republicans’ proposal makes me wonder: If they think have $10 billion to piss away on the wall of Trump’s dreams, could they not redirect that $10 billion to healthcare or to education? They could, but, of course, they never would.

But I believe the Wall will never be built. Trumpy and the swindlers in the House do not really intend to build a wall. Most of them (not all by any means) are not that stupid and would never waste so much money (when they could give it to their rich friends). No, the whole Wall business is a drama they’ve been running to appeal to sub-rational and bigoted voters. There are a lot of them, and the Wall has real appeal. What will they do when Trumpy & Co. tell them that they were only kidding? How much time, energy, false hope, and rancor will have been wasted on this fantasy by then?

Today I read a report of the involvement (I suppose we can’t call it collaboration) of Facebook and Twitter in Russian attempts to destabilize the U.S.A. Of course Twitter, like so many of its clients, is trying to evade responsibility for the content of twitters. The article quoted an expert’s opinion that “Twitter functions more like a broadcast network. People say things and everyone can hear it. When false informaltion is stated, people can jump on false statements and challenge it.” Note that she said “false statements,” not mistaken statements, and “false statements” are very often the malicious and are the same as LIES. And I must ask: does no one bear responsibility for creating and spreading lies? Broadcast networks can be held to some extent accountable for creating and/or spreading lies, though Fox and the limbaughs get away with a great deal. But twitters, with their option for anonymity can spread lies with no adverse consequence to the liars. This anonymity is the mask behind which internet trolls lurk, along with Russian agents and anyone else up to mischief. I do not know how we can go on if liars cannot be detected and face no adverse consequences. The blessings of democracy are too often used to subvert it. We have pushed “freedom of speech” beyond any reasonable limit and opened a way for the sick and the malicious.

So the Theological College across the road from Catholic University has withdrawn its invitation to Fr. James Martin to speak to its alumni. It seems this was done not in response to pressure from the bishops, but at the behest of agitators public and private who live for homophobia. Theological College has never been known for critical or independent thinking, but their caving in to losers (to use President Trump’s word) with homegrown websites and maniacs that shriek over the telephone suggests that T.C. has just about hit bottom. I looked up the “Church Militant” website and found it packed with 1950s re-runs of various kinds. Like Car Talk, they have a Shameless Commerce Division called STORE, and you can buy yourself a cool tee shirt there or a Church Militant coffee mug.

Trump will have to come up with more than the placebos and platitudes of his two statements about Charlottesville to show he is not a Nazi. The first statement was worse than none, and the second statement was just boiler plate. I believe that he made his declaration with tongue in cheek. He was reciting formulae and platitudes so banal as to cause no problem for the alt-right, leaving them to believe that “Trumpy had to say something out of Sunday school so as to calm the squeamish, but we know he’s still on our side.”

What could Trump do to make his denunciation of racism and violence credible? He could clear his own house of crypto-Nazis. He could get rid of Steve Bannon, his Ernst Roehm, and Bannon’s minion, Sebastian Gorka, and get rid of Stephen Miller, the Joseph Goebbels of the Trump Whitehouse.

If Trump would rid himself of these and other deplorables his declaration might become credible.