Welcome to The Dahl Street Journal – Reality For The Rest of Us – for Tuesday January 8, 2019. Today, we are taking a look at the The Ancient Proverb of Going Balls To The Wall.
$5.6 Billion Dollars…Where did that number come from? From where my wife and I live, that’s a lot of money. According to Google; “If someone gave you a billion dollars and you spent $1,000 each day, you would be spending for about 2,740 years before you went broke.” So, I guess with $5.6 billion you could spend $5,600 per day for 2,740 years. The current lifespan of an adult in the U.S. is estimated at just shy of 79 years. So, when you divide 2,740 by 79 you come up with about 35 lifetimes. That means in one lifetime, you would have to spend $196,000 per day. I’ve never earned that much one in one year, let alone be faced with spending that each and every day of my life. Frankly, in our family, we wouldn’t have a clue what to do with that kind of money.
Trump doesn’t either. Yet, he wants to spend OUR money – $5.6 billion of it… on a wall? The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) built the last segment of the Great Wall of China some 3,700 miles long. The purpose of the structure was defensive, built to protect the Chinese Empire against various aliens, strangers, threats, and folks that might terrorize the kingdom. It was necessary for national security. Sound familiar?
It was necessary for national security. Sound familiar?
So, here we are some 375 years later and a goofy, narcissistic emperor in Washington D.C. has decided he’s got an incredibly unique and strategically essential idea to replicate something from 375 years ago. The last emperor of the Ming dynasty in China was a fellow called the Chongzhen Emperor aka Zhu Youjian. How did it all work out? The emperor hung himself on a tree in the imperial garden on April 24, 1644. On that date, Beijing fell to a peasant revolt led by a guy named by Li Zicheng.
Translation: The wall actually concentrated the passions of the dissidents within the kingdom who collectively revolted against the emperor.
In 2017, approximately 139 million foreign tourists visited China spending nearly $70 billion. Over a million Chinese tourists visit the U.S. annually, spending an estimated $1.6 billion in the states (airfare not included).
Moral of this proverb: Going balls to the wall imperils emperors. It inflames internal dissent and accelerates imperial demise.
So says history anyway…Mexico understands that.
