Coughcough cough
By 1279, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan had established the Yuan dynasty in China and crushed the last Song resistance, which marked the onset of all of China under the Mongol Yuan rule. This was the first time in history that the whole of China was conquered and subsequently ruled by a foreign or non-native ruler.
“the majority of the existing wall is from the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).”
After the invasion
Please do read links that you post.
While the existing (fancy looking) wall is from the period Ming dynasty, a formidable wall on the northern frontier has existed for at least a millennia before that and that it was constantly renovated and reinforced.
So the underlying logic that somehow the wall is responsible for the lack of invasions is faulty. There was a wall when the Mongols started their forays and it didn’t help.
My professional side is coming to the fore. Historically, walls weren’t that useful when it came to hermetically sealing large swathes of territory. Protecting a fort, a city or a strategic promontory? Extremely effective. Territory? Not so much.
Most of the ancient walls (Roman limes on the Rhine/Danube, Hadrian’s and Antonine’s walls in Scotland) weren’t about hermetically sealing frontiers but funneling goods and people (both regular folks and armed invaders) through specific choke points, buying time until a sufficient force could be mustered to deal with the threat.
You could argue that only Israel and East Germany erected effective concrete barriers, but specific geographical and political peculiarities played a decisive role.
Good to see you acknowledge Obama did it as well.
Carry on.
Didn’t stop the Japanese either.
Well, you can thank Trump for making it about race. When it was about jobs and even drugs, it was one thing, but when Trump made it about the actual people, calling the majority of them rapists and murderers while emphasizing that they are also Mexicans, he changed things in a negative way. It went from wanting a secure border to wanting to keep out brown people.
So it kept the invaders in? That sounds like it should be called the Great Wall of Poland.
In Trump’s defense my family has been wanting to get the brown people out since way before he ever launched his first tweet.
Pretty much the only way in which WV was ahead of the curve
Agreed all. I hope it was clear the suggestion to bring in chinese slave labor was in jest. I’m rather anti-slave.
In true Trump fashion I could claim that their wall wasn’t bigliest enough to stop the mongols. That’s why the Mings made it bigliest-er.
A true “wall” on the southern border is a boondoggle. But increased enforcement is paying off 3 fold:
Ah–you’re trolling. Got it.
Have to agree. Trump’s language was disturbing and counter-productive.
At the same time though, for some there really has been a significant impact. The next few towns heading north from here look very…south of the border now. Very. Litter, rundown, crowds of Mexican men hoping for white guys in pick up trucks to pick 'em up at every store along the main strip. Spanish signs everywhere. Streams of brown foot traffic punctuated by the occasional black who has yet to flee to the next town. And even rarer, the white. Usually the whites are gassing up and collecting laborers out of the milling crowds of brown men.
I suppose in the same way brown people might resent the whitening up of their scenery and local culture, same too for the rural whites who’ve not just watched their towns transform in color, but also in its culture. The suburban whites don’t care. as they just move to where the brown folks are mostly priced out. Again and again, if need be. Maybe even put up a nice little security fence featuring a quaint little security booth with a key card protected gate/arm.
Oh totally. I have more than enough super low skill relatives to understand their fear of being replaced by immigrants.
That being said, it’s never been a real issue in WV, at least in my experience. I think WV still ranks as one of the lowest “non white” per capita populations. And not having a lot of brown people sure as shit didn’t stop them from having one of the worst state economies in the country, or the heroine syringe
I thought you were one of the smarter liberals on here…
I state facts and am accused of trolling.
…I suppose I was wrong.
What is the whitening up of brown culture? Or to be more precise, what is white culture? Is it European? Like the Europeans who settled in Mexico?
When I was younger, I worked as a lowly grad student on a research paper (yes, really) that analyzed this in more detail.
Short summary - border walls and barriers can only work if you’re trying to keep people from leaving, in other words if you control the staging area from which crossings are made.
If there’s an uncooperative/hostile entity on the other side, it simply won’t work, draconian measures notwithstanding. That’s what the Roman understood and focused on establishing/protecting client kingdoms that acted as buffer zones, where the border barrier is literally the last resort.
Even modern vaunted anti-immigrant fences as the one in Hungary doesn’t work - it’s a fourth physical barrier from Turkey and the migrants are still seeping through. That’s why it’s a hot issue in Europe now which non-EU countries will act as buffer zones.
Moral issues aside, if the US really wanted to slow down the influx of immigrants it would have to occupy Mexico, establish a puppet government and then fence off Mexico’s southern border and staff it with compliant Mexican ICE agents, coupled with a massive military pacification campaign against the cartels in order to reestablish order, not to mention a military intervention in Central America.
That’s what the Romans and the Brits would do. All this “build the wall” is bullshit unless you address the push factors as well.
For a more thorough answer, you’ll have to ask the folks who object to it (white culture) getting an anchor into their neighborhoods However, as a quick thought, since you’ve asked…
If there is white privilege (there is), doesn’t that imply there is a cultural foundation? Also, if there are brown, black cultures to be appropriated, it sort of implies we are supposed to be “acting white,” no? If racial minorities can do white face and act like white girls, do impersonations of a gee wiz whitebread family living in suburbia (or of a trailer dwelling clan who might jut also be members of the Klan) for a comedy skit, get laughs pretending they’re a white person calling security on fellow shoppers, or calling over ushers to complain about noisy minorities yelling at the movie…
To me it seems as if we are viewed as having a culture. Sort of an umbrella which might encompass a variety of preferences and socio-economic realities, sure. But, nonetheless, an umbrella. At least, so it seems to me.
I mean, if there is one thing that is made crystal clear in academia and the media these days, it’s that being white is a very different experience from that of being brown or black.
I mean, I agree it couldn’t be 100% effective. How many things are, though? Maybe not even 80%, but surely there would be a significant reduction. “Seeping” implies a better state than–oh, I don’t know–“gushing?” And, If not, why is there any objection on the part of, or for the benefit of, the would be immigrants? They’ll still be able to cross, no harm done… Well, to them, at least.
I don’t know anyone who has raised these objections.
No it doesn’t, whether there is white privilege or not. But if you want to make that claim then from what culture is it founded upon?
No. Even if you believe that cultural appropriation is a thing, what does acting white mean? A white man from Brooklyn and a white man from Mississippi and a white man from Michigan and a white man from Madrid and a white man from London and a white man from Athens and a white man from Tehran and a white man from Sao Paulo won’t all be interchangeable.
Tropic Thunder.
By whom?
And being black in Jamaica is different from being black in America. Being black and Nigerian is different than being black and Ethiopian. Being a Tutsi in Rwanda is different from being a Hutu in Rwanda. Being a white in Manhattan is different from being a white in Appalachia. Being white in a favela is different from being white in Ipanema. Being me is different from being you which is different from whoever.
My parents’ roots are from two different European countries and the cultural differences were obvious. Not only did I have to switch between languages but I switched behaviors as well.
Would the reduction come from those who want a better life or from the rapists and murderers? The real “bad hombres” will find a way through.