The Colombian Necktie: the Myth of the Mexican Wall

The Colombian Necktie: the Myth of the Mexican Wall   

As an amateur student of Spanish (mas o menos), I am always interested in learning new cultural references and ideas. The Colombian Necktie (don't hit the link if you are eating lunch) reminds me of the ambitions of a certain Republican presidential candidate. The myth is a visual reminder of what is going to happen to us if we are not careful, make bad choices, or do not listen to the advice of others. Like Donald Trump, as I will show, it is a reactionary and lacks real substance.  

This particularly gruesome myth, which stems from Colombia, is that the unlucky victim's throat is slit horizontally and the victim's tongue is pulled through the open wound. The "necktie" then is the tongue being dragged down the throat and exiting the open wound. Nasty stuff right?  

It is not possible. The tongue is a short muscle that is distinctly attached to the mouth; even if it was capable of elongation, the muscle is not long enough and not designed for it to be forcefully pulled. For most of us with our limited medical knowledge and lack of basic understanding of simple anatomical structures, it seems that this method of execution is entirely feasible. It is not. 

The tactics employed by Trump fall under the same category: impossible. One ready example Trump has repeatedly stressed that the only solution to the illegal immigration problem is to build a massive wall. Many walls. And have Mexico pay for them all.

Now as we are examining this later election cycle, it seems Trump is attempting to be more PC and we are not hearing as much about the wall as we were 8 months ago. But as an electorate we should not be deceived; the ideas Trump's rabid anti-immigration policy (and the wall) are still very much the focus of his right-wing supporters. To "build a wall" is to try to perform a Colombian necktie; you can pull that tongue out as much as you want, it is not going to budge. It is not anatomically possible. The economic structures of both Mexico and the United States (we do manage to tax illegal immigrants by the way) are counter-intuitive to a massive wall, That is what American voters need to keep in mind for November, that the "big ideas" forwarded by Trump are not structurally possible. It looks totally legit, but our tongue does not go that far guys.