The Harland Highway - 909 - The WALL!!! Harland discusses the BORDER WALL - Is it bad or good?

Episode Date: October 2, 2017

Harland has a non-political look at the usefulness of a border wall. Would it be bad or good? You decide! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay, everybody. Okay, okay, settle down. Everybody sit down, sit down, relax. Everyone come, sit down, please. This is Harlan Williams, your teacher. No, your host. I'm a host, not a teacher. The host of the Harland Highway podcast.

And today, spoiler alert, spoiler alert, every now and then. I hope you're not annoyed. I hope maybe somehow this is insightful, maybe causes you to think, makes your wheels spin. I don't know. Every now and then I do a podcast that isn't comedy-driven. I get on a topic that's more social or political or whatever, and I start rambling about it. Before I know it, I'm through the whole podcast, and that's what's happening

today. I watched this crazy TV show on the telly, and it got me thinking really hard and deep about the whole Mexican-American border and the wall that has not been built between the two countries but has always been on the table has always been talked about

and this TV show I'll tell you about it when we get into the show really made me think more deeper and harder about it and made me see a lot of things that I didn't know and made me sad because a lot of people were getting hurt and dying in this whole, you know, illegal immigration scandal.

So here we go. Hope you like it. Hang in there. This is the Harland Highway. Put on your seatbelt. It's about to get bumpy. Oh, how perfectly awful. I get my kids above the waistline.

When will they take the bandages off? We don't know who we are. We don't know where we are. You're riding down the Harland Highway. Let us out of here! Please! Let me tell you, you're starting something here that that's what you should be frightened of. Oh, fuck yeah, bud.

Just leave us alone. Sit down, strap in, and shut up. What's going on? What's the matter? I thought maybe if I could kill him, I could make him stop. My mother never breastfed me. She told me she liked me. He's a friend. Who are we? This is the Harland Highway.

What? Harland Highway. It's a cookbook. It's not a cookbook. It's a border wall. I want to talk about the border wall today. And I'm not talking, you know, about whether you're a fan of it or whether you're against it.

This is just an organic talk coming from a neutral place, and I will share some opinions on it. And it's coming. This talk is coming because I just stumbled on this show on the weekend. It's a National Geographic show. I was just kind of bored. It was after dinner. And I'm just channel surfing.

And I see this thing on Nat Geo, which usually has good programming because they're Nat Geo, bro. And they had this thing called Border Wars. And so I clicked on it for like two minutes thinking, what the hell does this mean? And I just happened to click, you know, when I came in on it, it was just kind of an exciting moment where some American border security guards were chasing some fleeing immigrants through the desert who were trying to get into the United States and caught them. And I was like, okay, I'm a little bit hooked here. So I pressed record and I recorded like four or five episodes just to.

kind of, you know, see what this was all about. And what I saw was kind of stuff I really wasn't aware of before. Of course I knew, and I think we all know that the, that people running across the border sneaking into the United States is an issue. It's a problem. It's a political issue. It's a moral issue. It's a societal issue.

It's a financial issue. It's so many issues. And so it becomes. very divisive and very heated and there's all kinds of people and opinions on on how and how it should be handled and what it should be and what we should do and I'm not here to to push my thoughts or opinion on anyone. All I'm here to do is open up the discussion based on what I saw and what I saw was really, really like sad because I really I watched like I think four or five episodes of this thing.

And I saw people that were hungry, some who were hungry, some who were desperate, some who wanted a better life, trying to sneak into the United States through the desert and across the Rio Grande and over and under the wall, et cetera. I saw people who weren't desperate to get here who were just the criminal element. I saw gang members from MS-13, and I saw. coyotes and drug smugglers and people like that. So people that were just taking advantage of the United States, trying to profit off the United States.

And I saw people coming in from, you know, Guatemala and El Salvador and Mexico, and I saw safe houses, and I saw people sneaking across the river and hiding in the bushes. And I saw scouts up in trees that were spying on the American border. border guard so they can notify their coyotes on the ground. A coyote, by the way, is the guide, is the person that leads

two, three, ten, fifteen, 25 illegal immigrants through the desert and tries to help sneak them across. So not good people. But what I saw was desperation. I saw manipulation. I saw criminal activity, I saw sadness, I saw death, I saw hunger, I saw just so many things.

I saw so many things that were wrong and flawed on both sides. And it was just really horrible to see that human beings are being trafficked and bartered and used as currency and manipulated and people are making money off of their dire situations. and very often getting their money and then leaving them to fend for themselves and not really taking care of them. And I saw, I saw, you know, a 15-year-old boy, his corpse floating down the Rio Grande. He had drowned from trying to sneak across. I saw people driving vans full of tons of bundles of marijuana and, and opium, and who knows, what into the river and trying to sneak it over the border, hiding it in the radiators of their trucks and cutting open the panels of their vehicles and trying to submerse the drugs in liquids

and wrapping them in lead and all this effort and all this stuff just for the sake of all these illegal activities. You know, the illegality of, for one, let's be honest, sneaking into another country. It's illegal to come into another country without proper documentation or paperwork. Not just in America, not just at the Mexican border, from Canada into the states, from the states into Canada, from Mexico into the states, from Russia into China, from Germany into France, yada, yada, every country in the world has borders for a reason. And so you see people just constantly trying to sneak over the border trying to carry hundreds of thousands of pounds of drugs over the border. They were floating them across on rafts.

They were using people as mules to carry them on their backs. They were hiding them in cars. They were airdropping them with ultralight hang gliders and planes in the middle of the night. I mean, what weren't they doing to get these drugs across? And when you look at the endless, expanse of the border, and you look at how penetrable it is, how wide open it is in many spots, you know, it's just almost ludicrous to even try and stop it, and it's disheartening

to see that people are taking advantage of it, not respecting the borders, using the borders for criminal activity on many, many levels, and people are dying and suffering and being hurt. And then there's the residual effect of when illegals get into the country, how they impact the community, how they impact the economy, how they impact the system. And then you have the next level of when all these hundreds of thousands of tons of drugs and money come into the system, how those are affecting our children and our friends and our family and people that are getting addicted to drugs and overdosing and blah, blah, blah. And so it's a real, real problem.

And not only that, but I saw all the time and money and resources that the Americans put into trying to stop this. Not only the border guards and ice and borderland security, but also people who are victims of this kind of activity, citizens who own land and own ranches raid along the border. And these people are forming their own vigilante groups and going out at night and helping the border guards. They're spotting, they're spying, they're watching, they're forming groups because they can't handle all these

strangers coming on to their land and in cases committing violence, in cases stealing their vehicles, cases abusing and using their land and their property and having them live in fear of these strangers coming on to their property. And so I'm circling back now to the function of a wall. And forget that Donald Trump has proposed a wall because other politicians in the past have proposed a wall.

But forget about the politics of it. But just think of it as a physical structure. And yes, there's always those that are going to find a way over or under. or around. But let me ask you this. If you're driving your car and you're going down a road you travel all the time and the wind blows a tree down across the road, it becomes a physical barrier, are you going to get out and climb over the tree?

Are you going to ram your car through the tree? What do you do? you'll probably turn around and go away maybe look for another road but it becomes an impediment to your progress it becomes an obstacle it becomes something more than what you want to deal with or if a river floods or if you know if you know you know there's a road with a bunch of speed bumps you're like oh god i don't want to so what i'm saying is with all this stuff going on with all these people that want to come here and and just because they want to come here doesn't mean people should come here or it's right to come here.

There's a legal way to do it and not do it, period. You can argue that all day, but I've told you before, I've said it, there's a legal way to do things and a not legal way to do things. And so I watched this show, and I was like, man, if they did put up some kind of a wall, and it could be the Republicans, it could be the Democrats, it could be all of them, I don't know, but if they did put up some kind of a physical barrier that that was actually effective that is not not built to be racist or elitist or to be cruel or mean or or you know against another group of people but you're you're merely putting something up on your border and if you're sitting here going, what the hell is he talking about?

Well, think about your backyard, ladies and gentlemen. Do you have a fence in your backyard? Why do you have a fence up in your backyard? That backyard, you have property lines. Those are borders. You don't want people running through your backyard. You don't want things getting into your backyard. You want some privacy.

If someone's in your backyard, you want them to be invited into your backyard. You want them to be there for the right reasons. You want them to be in your backyard because you allow them. it that is your private property no one should be in it unless you consent to let somebody on it so that's like a microcosm of what our border is and so i can't stand it when people make this like a big like racial or or or anti-immigrant uh type of of argument and so what i'm saying is i'm asking, I'm asking the question, should we have a big wall that creates an obstacle to the majority of people to stop this infiltration, to stop people from getting the idea in their head,

from stop giving them the perception and the reality that it's easy to get across, because watching this show, it was easy to get across. And by the way, on this show, I'm watching, you know, just a small segment, a small population of border guards catching those that they catch, which I've got to assume is probably 5% of what really comes across. And so if people in Mexico or if you need to build a wall in Canada or whatever, and let's remember in Israel they have a wall and it works, if you have to build a wall. and it works, if you have to build a wall to stop people from coming over, is that a smart thing to do?

And when I say, build a wall, I don't mean, oh, let's keep the Mexicans out. Screw the Mexicans. I love Mexicans. I got nothing in the world against Mexicans. What I do worry about is Mexicans, drowning in rivers,

Mexicans being manipulated and used by their own people to carry drugs. Mexicans being herded like cattle through dangerous, precarious situation, sometimes days, weeks at a time through arid desert where they die of dehydration and malnutrition or they get bit by snakes. Gang members using their own people

to mule drugs across the border. This is what I don't like and this is where I go, forget about all the illegal immigration all the other stuff that comes without having a patrolled and monitored border is horrific. This is what

I learned from watching this show and if you don't believe me, watch the show. Form your own opinion. Don't listen to me. But this is the thing. When I watched this show, I thought my God, if a wall could stop drug mules from trying to use people to get

drugs over the border, if they could stop coyotes from dragging people through the desert, if they could stop young children from drowning in the river. And at the same time, knock out a big percentage of the drug trade, and at the same time, combat illegal immigration, which is obviously a problem. You could be for it or against it. That's up to you. I'm not telling you how to think. You could be for it or against it. But a wall certainly not only, and here's my point,

it not only protects the sovereign United States of America, but after watching this show, Border Wars, I feel it would protect the Mexican people. Statistically, thousands die every year trying to make this journey. Thousands, hundreds die in the river. Drown in the river. Hundreds, thousands are killed by gang association. Hey, everybody.

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Just go to Adam and Eve.com and select it. any one item, it could be an adventurous new toy, or anything you desire. Just enter the offer code Harland to check out. That's Harland, H-A-R-L-A-N-D at Adam and Eve.com. This is an exclusive offer specific to this podcast. So be sure to use this code Harland so you get your discount and 100% free shipping. Code Harland. Have fun. Don't throw your back out. hundreds, thousands die from trying to walk through the horrible, unforgiving environment of the desert. And so without thinking of the wall from the American perspective,

where some people seem to think it's all racist and this and that, why don't we think of the wall from the Mexican perspective where, holy crap, none of this activity can continue? And in essence, it saves hundreds of thousands of lives yearly. It stops and slows the drug trade. And it helps or stops or eliminates even the curse of the huge illegal immigration migration migration across the border. And then you have a wall where you can control who.

coming in and out, and you have all the Mexican people you want. Who cares? Like I said, I love them. Have the same amount come through that are coming through illegally. I don't care. But let's just do it the right way, the legal way. And so everything I said here isn't the answer. Again, I want to stress, I'm not saying I'm right or wrong.

I'm just saying these are thoughts that occurred to me watching this show. I can't sit here and say I'm right or wrong because there's too many people that have too many opinions on this topic and I don't want people calling and going oh you're fucking trump guy you love the wall it's got nothing to do with trump this is this has something to do with a problem many problems and people and lives and cultures and and borders and laws forget that there's even any politicians at all pretend it's just the ranchers on one side and the and the ranchers on the other or the people who live by the border on one side the people who live on the border on the other. How do they deal with all these problems? And you can't deny that putting up a well-thought-out wall

that prevents people or severely limits people from getting over it or under it or through it or around it is like the tree across the road analogy. It's like people will come up to them and go, you know what? It's just too much work. Damn it. I can't climb over a wall. I can't drink. I can't drill through this wall. This wall's too high. This wall's too thick. You know what? I guess I'm just going to abandon this idea and stay where I am. I don't want to deal with it because even if I get over the wall, then I got border guards on the other side and blah, blah, blah, now they got more technology to track me down. So I don't know. Here's all I want you to do is maybe you guys can do this. Look up this show in your TiVo or your direct TV or your direct TV or

or whatever cable package you have. And I'm going to urge you to watch this show, man. And I think it's called Border Wars on National Geographic. And it sure open my eyes. I mean, I thought I knew all the issues and problems. But, man, when you watch this, you'll just see how tragic and sad and futile it is. And what's also tragic is, you know,

once all these people come over the border, it's frustrating because the border patrol has been ordered to hand out fruit juices and sandwiches and and you know there's no repercussions it's like i even saw one episode where they caught like 20 people you know sneaking across they caught them and in in spanish one of the the border guards said don't be don't be afraid we're kind we're kind people where are you from blah blah blah they took them in processed them gave them juice, which is compassionate. You don't want anyone dying, but I'm just saying the overall look and feel is there's no repercussions.

If you sneak into this country, it's like, all right, we got you, we fingerprinted you, here's some ice cold drinks, here's some sandwiches, there's some food, and then they put you on a bus or a plane and take you back. And then the very next day you could run across again and go, oh, this time I made it. And you can keep doing that over and over until you make it. And so here's the American people burdening the cost of all that and the time and the expertise and the money and the wherewithal. And it's just a revolving door of nothingness.

And before you get too amped up about, well, that's incompassionate. No, what's incompassionate is many, many Mexicans are dying. That's what's in compassion. The system where we're just letting them come through and have a revolving door is costing lives because there's no repercussion. So if they don't drown in the river

or get bit by the snake or get raped by a drug mule or get raped by a coyote or die of dehydration, the first time through, maybe it's going to happen the second. And that's not to say, All of them have that fate, but, you know, many of them get here and go on to live and raise families and have jobs and all that, but that should also be done legally, right? That's what I think.

But this is more about all these lives and all these other lives that are getting damaged and damaged and impacted negatively, not just Mexicans, but Americans that live on the border, having to deal with this influx of, people and crime and activity and it's just a mess it's just a big mess and and you'd think that when you got caught coming over the border illegally there'd be some kind of deterrent some kind of it's like holy smokes i never want to go through that again they locked me up for for a year or they they uh they did this or that maybe they should just shoot like a chip some kind of GPS chip into people sneaking across so they can track them. I don't know. But right now it's just like there's nothing.

It's this nothingness. It's like it's a little game where it's like you run across. We catch you. You go back. You run across again. We catch you. La la la la. Everyone's afraid to do anything because it's not politically correct.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, man, watch the show. Watch the show and see if you have the answers. Maybe you have some kind of opinion, but I think you'll be hard-pressed to not feel like it's just sad what's happening when you watch this show Border Wars, man. It's heavy. It's tough. And I don't know if a wall, just for the sake of a wall, can stop so many things. If you can stop and remove all the attachments that people are.

have put on it, like the racist thing and the hate thing and this thing and that thing. And just look at it. It's a wall to prevent bad things from happening. Drugs, illegal immigration, death, drug trafficking, coyotes, blah, blah, blah, all the things I've listed. Is it perfect? No, but what else are you going to do? again go back to the analogy of the fence in your backyard why don't you just take your fences down why don't you let your neighbors wander through your yard why don't you you know there's

there's perimeters in the world in in life for a reason and if you're saving lives if you're sending a message if you're establishing your perimeter there's nothing racist or wrong with that, in my opinion. You're just putting up a fence around your yard. Can you imagine if you had a backyard and let's say you were African American and your neighbor was white and you're an African American guy and you put a fence around your backyard and your white neighbor leaned over and said, what's with the fence, buddy? And you go, oh, I'm putting up a fence. I want a fence for some privacy, and your white neighbor goes, dude, this is racist, man. You can't put up a fence.

What if I want to walk across your lawn? And the African-American guy goes, well, this is my property. I bought this. I own this. This is private property. Oh, okay, racist. No, I'm not a racist. Yes, you are.

You know what? I'm going to crawl over your fence anyways, and I'm going to have a campfire in your backyard tomorrow night. Well, you can't do that. Who says I can't? and on and on and on, right? But I think when you watch this show and you see all the stuff that's happening, I'm not even describing half of it, man.

I recommend you watch it for yourself and, you know, just try and maybe you come to a whole different conclusion. You might be like, fuck, no, tear down the wall, let's just, everyone should flow freely across every border. Why do we have perimeters? Well, I don't know that that's a smarter logical argument, but I'm not going to sit here and tell you you're wrong or you're right. But again, I'll go back to, do you leave your doors unlocked at night? Do you, do you tear the fence down in your yard? Do you leave your garage open?

Do you leave your car unlocked? I don't think so. Do you just leave your children with strangers to babysit? I don't think so. So watch it, think about it. It'd be fun to hear from you guys and see where you're at with this, man. And it is. It's a very complex problem, but it's also maybe a very simple fix.

I don't know. Even talking about it, I can just tell some of you are probably getting your bristles. Oh, let's see. A wall. Oh, Trump. I'm telling you. it's not Trump. I was not sitting there watching this show going,

oh, I hope Trump builds the wall. I was sitting there going, holy shit, I hope whoever's in power puts up a wall to stop this, to stop the death and the carnage and the drugs and the, all of it. But now I'm repeating myself. I'm whistling in the wind. You watch it and you decide. I think you're going to be impacted.

I think you're going to be like, whoa. this is heavy man this is a lot of stuff border wars on national geographic look at that i spent the whole podcast talking about it so now now you have to do it you're like damn it i i spent a half hour of my life listening to harland williams man and uh you know i got now i got him go watch a tv show shit man

so i don't know maybe you might have turned me off already You might have shut me off already. I don't know. But it's just something that I watched and it moved me and it made me think. And I'd love to hear what you think. So if you want, check it out and send me an email. Maybe you have a totally different point of view. Maybe you agree.

Let's all be civil about it, please. And you can write me or email me and let me know your thoughts. Remember, at the end of the day, I'm just looking out. For the compassion of people, I don't like seeing people floating dead in rivers, 15-year-old boys. I don't like seeing little girls and wives and mothers and old men trudging through the desert. Their life in the hands of some slimy coyote who couldn't give a living fuck about them and just wants their money. And the minute he sees a border guard, he runs because he knows the terrain. and these people are standing there defenses trying to, you know,

figure out how to survive in the wilderness and which way to go. And they got like half a day's supply of water and food for a 12-day journey. That's what I'm, that's what I'm thinking about when I say, put a wall up and let's stop this shit. Again, love the Mexican people. Bring them all in if they can do it through the right channels. I don't care. People are people to me. I don't care your nationality, your skin color.

And just because people like to look for that racist angle, I say the same thing in Canada. If Canada was a problem, do the same damn thing to Canadians. And I'm a Canadian, man. It's not about races or people or race. It's about solving a problem. And until there's a better, easier way to do it, I don't know what else to propose.

Maybe you can tell me. Harlandwilliams.com. You can write me, harlidwilms.com at the contact link, or maybe you want to phone me and leave me a message. Love to hear from you. So it's a big topic. 323-739-4330.

Try to leave politics out of it if you can. I don't know if it's possible. I would just like to talk about the issue, the problem, the wall, and what's happening to the Mexican people. and can the wall, can a wall, whoever it's built by, put an end to a lot of the pain and suffering? I don't know. But let's not make it a Trump-Hillary thing. Let's not make a Democrat-Republic.

That's not the angle I'm coming at it with. And if that's the angle you're going to try to spin on it, I don't really want to hear from you. I really don't. I'd like to hear a neutral conversation about it, as I've, tried to present here with you guys um so there who that's what i get for watching that g oh jesus settle down har i used up the whole show oh well every now and then i do this i i i totally sidestepped the comedy and the silliness and i get on a and an important topic that i just start rambling about and some of you are probably like fuck man i wanted to laugh tonight

well i'm sorry but you know 99.9% of the shows are hopefully a giggle fest we'll get back to it next show okay um but let me give you some announcements please um let's see what do i got coming up oh irvine if you want some comedy come see me live at the irvine Improv. Thursday, October 12th to the 15th. That's in Orange County, California. And then, let's see, in October 20 and 21st. Oh, man, I got the hiccups. Do you that?

Now they stop, of course. As soon as I tell you, I have them, they stop. That's unbelievable. Like I had, I just had like six of them. And as soon as I said, oh, I got the hiccups, they stopped. Weird. October 20th to the 21st, I'll be at Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank, California, great little club. November, I'm up at the Helium Club in Buffalo.

I'm over in San Jose, California at the improv. I'm up at Edmonton, Alberta, at the West Edmonton Mall, all kinds of great gigs coming up. So check it out, man. Come see the kid live. It's a lot funnier than my big talk about the wall. trust me. And that's it for today. Write me, call me, as I said.

Check out harlanwilliams.com. We have a store there. You can purchase items. And also you can become a premium member on the app link. Just go in there for $20 a year. You get every episode of the Harlan Highway ever done. Cool. And also get our free app.

It's free. Just go to your app store. Type in the Harlan Highway. podcast and boom you get the 50 latest episodes absolutely free and you can listen to it on your phone wherever you may be that rhymed uh and that's it man something to think about border wars on nat geo and until next time be safe

and chicken chowmaine baby