The Great Eastern Wall

      After decades of studies by major corporations, universities, and think tanks, it became clear the west’s problems, including crime, homelessness, housing shortages, unemployment, runaway gentrification, and congestion were caused by the multitudes of outsiders arriving daily from other states, especially in the winter months, like January 1, after the Rose Parade, when the entire country froze, and watched westerner basking in seventy-five degree temperature. 

      The New West, as the region called itself, militarized its borders, turning away those out-of-state Americans who attempted to cross its borders without proper employment, income, sponsorship, or safety nets of any kind, a drain on the region's economy. By 2024, it was rare to see a freeway underpass or public park without tents or cardboard housing, forcing the populace to put pressure on politicians, in addition to jam-packed freeways, side streets and grocery store lines. 

     Then, there were those outsiders who came west solely for a change, tired of their own states. They flooded the job market, especially in Hollywood, hoping for instant stardom, but most ended up on the streets, on drugs, or filling all the restaurant jobs. When outsider couldn’t gain legal entry by passing the residency requirements, they breeched the border in makeshift boats crossing the Colorado River, trekking through New Mexico’s deserts, and taking blue highways over Colorado’s mountain passes, like places in the Rocky’s (or Rockies, depending on one's spelling), to the Chagrin of Coloradans, who’d had it with Eastern, Mid-western, and Southern usurpers settling in the most beautiful spaces, like Pagosa Springs.

     From New Mexico to the Washington State border, ranchers and farmers complained about the uncontrolled masses illegally crossing into the West, some dying in desolate locations for lack of food or water, reminiscent of the famed Donner party of the 1800s, a real humanitarian disaster, claimed those who blamed the New West. 

                                                                                         

The wall's early prototypes, reminiscent of Inca construction

     It was at this point, the western states stopped talking and decided to create a wall across the most traversable areas, in hopes of stopping the masses from coming west. Arizona was indignant--and divided, part wanting to stay neutral, others wanting to join the New West. Minor skirmishes started in Peoria, just outside Phoenix, and moved to Buckeye, where rebel forces, mostly overweight guys dressed in an assortment of unmatched military clothing and brandishing automatic weapons, tried suppressing the vote, but were subdued in Douglas, by superior New West resistance forces. After a brief battle in Old Tombstone, right near the old OK Corral, where, luckily, no one died, the rebels called it quits, the 124-degree heat-wave too much for them. 

      Many Arizonans had such shallow roots in the state, they screamed and hollered, waved their guns around at the injustices, but they weren’t willing to die for the cause. Also, so many Californians had migrated to Arizona in the past thirty-years, especially the areas around Tempe and Tucson, both university towns, their money and political power swayed the vote, at which point, the Arizona rebels headed east, back to the “wet” states from where they’d come, originally, states like Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Vermont, Maryland, and New Hampshire, where doctors, in the early 1900s, had advised their asthmatic ancestors the western air and sun would do wonders for the respiratory systems.

      Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and parts of Utah saw the wisdom in remaining with California, creating the “New West,” a region where the relaxed, kick-back vibe had always been ingrained in the culture. The New Westerners wanted to get back to their “work hard but rest harder,” “drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll,” culture, so tired were they of the Calvinist, “All work no play keeps the devil away,” and “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop,” beliefs, anathema to true westerners, and one reason so many hippies travelled west in the 1960s, that, the plentitude of marijuana, and fear of being drafted for military service.. 

      Initially, up in Utah, the Mormons were split, referencing the song, "Should I Stay of Should I Go, but they knew the great earning power of the country was in the west, and seeing as hundreds, if not thousands of Mormon Temples already dotted the western landscape, the church fathers saw prime ground for recruiting, especially among the new Latin American and Asian immigrants working low-wage jobs. Besides, Mormons had been in the west so long, they had adopted western ways, a true “chill” attitude. 

      The clincher, though, was the uproar at BYU and University of Utah, two powerhouse higher education institutions in the state. Utah argued it had taken so long to become part of the Pac-12 Athletic Conference, competing with the likes of Stanford, UCLA, Washington, USC, Oregon, and Cal, it didn’t want to jeopardize its place in the western athletic conference. Eventually, BYU agreed, as long as nobody challenged its right to remain Independent, not beholden to any conference, and, maybe, when the time was right, it too would become part of the Pac-12, which would then make it the Pac-13, and the Mormons would finally be accepted, and maybe even a Romney great-grand child elected president. It could happen. 

      Like the rebel Arizonans who turned tail and headed east, the reactionary Mormons packed-up and fled to places like Grand Rapids, Fargo, Billings, Des Moines, Lincoln, and Manchester, NY, where Joseph Smith had his first vision in the Sacred Grove in 1816 but didn’t start the church until 1830 in Seneca, NY. The hardcore Mormons wanted back to their roots, which, ironically, was what initially started the New West movement, seeking a path back to its roots.” 

     Actually, a flicker of awareness had begun when Boyle Heights Chicanos in the early 1990s lobbied the Los Angeles city council and board of supervisors to change Brooklyn Avenue to Cesar Chavez, and again in 2020, when East L.A. Chicano protesters, bolstered by supporters from as far away as New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado, amassed thousands to stop Eastern Yuppies from gentrifying the barrio, fearing it would end up like Echo Park and Silverlake, then move on to gentrifying other cities across the west. 

                                                                                        

Photos of the wall at Tepatitlan as an example of simple construction

      Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas and states farther east, lobbied Washington to send in troops, first to stop the creation of a “new west,” then, years later, to stop the construction of the border wall, but seeing nothing in the Declaration of Independence prohibited states from unifying or building border walls, California and the New West had every right to proceed. 

      Besides, precedent had been set in the 1930s Dustbowl era, when western states, using armed guards, secured their borders, prohibiting Okies and Arkies from entering the western states. Really, Uncle Sam was cool with unification as long as the individual states kept their legislatures separate. Besides, no way did the feds want regional internecine war. 

      Furious, most die-hard rebels who opposed the wall said the New West would fail, spreading on social media sayings like, “No man is an island” and “It takes a village,” and demonizing the region as backwards, lazy, and sneaky, which pissed off some of the more conservative farmers and ranchers who saw themselves and their employees as hardworking as anybody. 

      Some rebels protested at the capitol in Washington, D.C., even bringing weapons, but realized they were outmanned and outgunned when the National Guard and contingents of the 82nd Airborne confronted them, the federal government having learned a lesson from the great insurrection of the capitol way back on January 6, 2021. 

      Many states, in fact, the most adherent to “states’ rights,” especially in the South, thought it wrong that western states could regulate their borders, allowing residency only to those who met their requirements, which, once you understood the political jargon, was mainly to be employed or have a significant savings, have housing, mind your own business, obey the laws, and be “cool,” avoiding the angst inherent in many East Coasters, explicit in many of Woody Allen’s movies, the music of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, and the Ramones, all nervous wrecks. 

      The Wall did cause Hollywood some concern, since so many of its big stars migrated west, like George Clooney and Johnny Depp, both Kentuckians, Brad Pitt, a Springfield, MO. boy, and Alabama’s, Courtney Cox. Even in the Latino community, people feared Floridian Pitt Bull, and New Yorkers Mark Anthony and Jennifer Lopez, might be nixed, unless they purchased homes in the west, and claimed residency there. The overriding concern was the New West might lose out on some great showbiz talent and business opportunities, which caused Colorado’s governor to say, a la Tolstoy, “How much land does a man need?” 

      The New West wasn’t worried, not with the names of the richest men and women in the world in residence. California housed the most sophisticated aerospace weapons manufacturers in the world, the largest naval ports, Marine, Navy, and Air Force Bases, a host of nuclear arms sites, places like Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Vandenburg and Point Hueneme. It boasted the mighty technology, agriculture, and energy industry, so it held a lot of leverage over Washington. One California senator was heard to have stated, “We don’t need to fire a shot if attacked. We can cripple the country--no, the world, with a bank of computers and a few geeks from Silicon Valley.” 

                                                                                         

Many natural boundaries helped keep the costs down

      As the wall moved along to completion, California and the New West continued sending more tax dollars to the nation’s capital than any other state or region in the union, especially since approximately 25 million of its residents had no legal documents, yet were still required to pay federal taxes and couldn’t claim tax returns, so billions of dollars in surplus funds created a real bonus for the feds and citizens of the U.S., as well as giving the New West a boost in low-wage employees to work the vast amount of jobs westerners felt beneath them. 

      This was a great embarrassment to states like the Dakotas, New England, and the South, who sent practically nothing to D.C., considering their states had barely between 300,000 and a couple of million residents, yet they got their two-senator representation in Washington, the same as California, which boasted nearly 40 million people. 

      Major corporations, which supported the New West from the beginning, bragged how California, alone, had the 5th largest economy in the world, stronger than Russia’s, but not quite a vast as Brazil’s, but together, the New West was number one, so the region didn’t fret about its entrepreneurial power or its vast resources, and claimed it had every right to protect its border from, what they called, “Union busters out of the East,” for that is where most of the opposition came—the East Coast. 

      Ultimately, traditional New West Republicans and Democrats joined forces, stopped listening to all attacks from cable news and political provocateurs, and realized the culture they embraced had been under assault for decades, and not from Latino migrants, people who stayed to themselves and had little to no political power, and after a generation or two, blended nicely into the rest of the population. 

    The real problem was outsiders from other state, who, ironically, wanted to recreate the same types of environments they had escaped, places with dense populations, congestion, bland foods, boring music, and aggressive behaviors, leading to myriads of angst, a loud and commanding people, with bizarre accents and language patterns. 

     It was a matter of saving the West's values, a fusion of music, foods, clothes, and behaviors going back to the late 1800s, when mostly Indians, Spanish, Mexicans, Chinese, Irish, and Italians fused a new culture, wide-open, kick-back and “cool.” 

                                                                                      

Satellite photo of author shows how high tech assists in border security

      The architects and engineers who designed the new border wall decided to take a page from the Intercontinental Railway that started at two opposite geographic poles, east to west, and met at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869. So, beginning in the north at Kaniksu National Park, on the Canada B.C. border and at Hobbs, N.M. in the south, the workers, mostly Mexican, Central Americans, and homeless from the cleared-out camps who were offered residency if they worked on the wall, would meet at Salt Lake City, where the Mormons lobbied to host the historic meeting, a reward, of sorts, for staying loyal to the west. 

      So many high mountain ranges, like the Rockies, and impassible deserts, created a natural barrier, so the border wall wasn’t as expensive or difficult to build as the U.S.-Mexico wall, which, by the way, lay in ruins, some place west of Otay Mesa, in California. Secret high tech security centers monitor areas where the wall was impossible to build.

      The New West courted all Baja, the Sea of Cortez, and large stretches of Sonora, from Agua Prieta to the beautiful beaches of Guymas, and even opened its southern borders, as the federal government looked the other way. A strange thing happened. 

     New Westerners began settling in Mexico's border states, with Mexican government's permission, starting businesses and buying vacation homes on the San Quintin bluff, just south of the Bufadora in Ensenada. Mexicans flooded U.S. border businesses, adding to the economy of every New Western state, boosting trade from Loretto to the Canadian border. 

     True, Mexicans and Central Americans poured across the border, but they replaced jobs abandoned by the millions of their brethren who had saved up money working in the New West, taken their earnings and returned to their countries to retire, infusing lackluster economies, causing something of a boom, creating jobs, and keeping many people home, instead of having to make the dangerous journey north. 

      The opponents of the New West, mostly descendants of "old-money" families, bankers and Wall Street-types, appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing the New West couldn’t use public money for such a monstrosity, as a wall, communism at its worst, just like China’s Great Wall, which, of course, everybody knows, was built long before the Chinese revolution between Chang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong, and the Great Wall had nothing to do with communism. 

     The Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, could find no laws or rulings that prohibited the New West’s frontier gusto. Besides, so much money was pouring in to the federal coffers, nobody wanted to rock the boat. 

      The New West revealed to the rest of the country, the money to build the wall had all come from private investors who believed states east of Rocky’s (surely east of the Continental Divide) were a drain on New West economies, which had already shifted from fossil fuel to renewable energy, created salt-water treatment plants, fast rail systems across the region, public transportation, and cleared the freeways, air and water, ironically, led by car manufacturers and energy corporations, themselves. 

     Refineries in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana cried “foul!” Already, they were fragging more violently and slanting wider and deeper, to no avail. Secretly, out of desperation, the big American oil companies had been illegally bringing in low-grade, Mexican crude, stolen by huachileros, and driven across the border to small refineries from Brownsville to Matamoros, and shipped in-land from there. 

      In the New West, the pandemic of 2021 had been a godsend. It proved companies profited more by allowing employees a hybrid schedule, part at home, part in the office, selling off unnecessary, underutilized facilities and using fewer utilities. They turned over the buildings to charter schools and public universities, creating educational watershed for everyone. 

     Companies offered employees six-month paternity leave, a four-day work week, automatic 30-day vacation a year, free healthcare and education, all the way to a B.A., but only if students worked one year of hard labor after high school graduation. 

      The only problem was when the announcement of these benefits reached the ears of outsiders in the East. It caused a mass exodus from the rest of the U.S. out west, a whole new take on the Gold Rush and “Go west, young man, go west,” just as the new wall was passing Provo, on its way to completion in Salt Lake City.