Jack of Harts

One of the difficult issues with the border between the United States and Mexico is that Mexico has been through a rather large number of failed governments over the centuries. And they don’t like the fact that we… negotiated their land from them. They in fact make it a national past time to print maps of Mexico including the territory we bought from them as part of Mexico. And Mexican people crossing the border carry those maps with them and often claim the territory as belonging to them. Tens of millions have crossed the border illegally in just the last few years in fact. With many tens of millions in the decades before that. And for an extra bit of joy, Mexican drug gangs are crossing the border with drugs, selling them to Americans, and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans over the last few years. The border is a serious problem that must be addressed. All nations that wish to remain nations must address such issues.

Now the United States of America had come a long way to negotiate with the Mexicans over the border, and some of the exchanges had been unkind. Some unkind words had been thrown back and forth. Some bullets. But the United States is a generous neighbor, so we chose to forget those unkind words and gave Mexico a bunch of gold in exchange for Mexican territory west of Texas all the way to the West Coast. California, here we come. As is sometimes the nature of agreements, there was some disagreement over what territory exactly belonged to whom. So a few years later, the United States bellied up to the bar with some more gold, and asked if Mexico wanted to negotiate some more, American style, or take the gold and come to a final agreement. Mexico took the money, walked out of the bar, and we’ve been in agreement over the border ever since. Oh… wait…

The United States and Mexico settled on the border between our nations after the Republic of Texas and Mexico got into their second dustup over whether or not Texas existed. Mexico said no and we’re going to kill you dirty rebels. Texas said yes and we’re going to shoot you first. And the United States bellied on up to the bar and said we’d like to have some input on this. Maybe we can talk things over? In Mexico City. So the United States Marines and the Texas Rangers took a little road trip down to Mexico City. Mexico did not by the way agree to the road trip, and in fact tried to stop it. And that’s how the Marines added “To the Halls of Montezuma” to the Marine Anthem. It’s amazing how many lines in that anthem were inscribed via extreme violence.