War & Peace Quote by Arlo Guthrie

Guthrie’s line lands with the plainspoken impatience of someone who’s watched politics dress up fear as “security” for decades. He doesn’t argue policy like a think-tank; he punctures the fantasy at the heart of wall-building: the belief that a physical barrier can permanently solve a human problem. The phrase “in the long run” is doing the heavy lifting. It shifts the debate from today’s photo-op toughness to tomorrow’s inevitable workaround, where technology, desperation, and ingenuity outpace concrete.

The offhand “knock it over or something” is classic Guthrie vernacular, a shrug that’s also a warning. He’s not literally forecasting a toppled wall so much as naming the asymmetry: a wall requires constant maintenance, money, moral justification; a breach only has to succeed once. That casual tone is the subtextual critique: leaders sell walls as definitive endings, but they’re really expensive pauses.

His nod to “the wall in Israel” pulls the comment into the post-9/11 security era, when borders became stage sets for national anxiety. By saying “some people are happy,” he acknowledges the emotional payoff walls provide - the feeling of control - without endorsing the ethics or effectiveness. The last clause, “between countries, though,” widens the scope beyond any single conflict. It’s a folk singer’s internationalism: you can’t drywall over history, inequality, occupation, migration, or grievance. Walls don’t resolve causes; they curate them, turning complex entanglements into a simple silhouette you can point at.