HEREFORD, Arizona — Doug Ducey’s last erection as governor was a three-mile makeshift barricade of shipping containers, a fitting monument to himself and the elephants he rode in on: an illegal, idiotic, destructive, short-lived, transparent con job to exploit gullible voters.

It typifies irreparable damage caused by Donald Trump’s futile attempts to build his Wall on a border already fenced off or protected by mountainous terrain. Even if completed, it would have been no more effective against human tides than sandbags piled up against rising seas.

Governor-elect Katie Hobbs was blunt: “It’s not our land to put things on. It’s a political stunt.” Plus, she added, “I think it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars.” And how.

By the time trucks chew up yet more desert to haul it away, it will have cost well over $100 million, or 2,500 “TGTs,” the Mort Report parallel currency based on third grade teachers’ annual pay. That would cover Arizona’s classroom shortfall and allow for long overdue raises.

Had the stacked containers remained in place, their only practical purpose would have been as staging modules for smugglers. Holes cut into them on the Mexican side with camouflaged exits on the other would help them traffic migrants, drugs and perhaps a few terrorists.

TUCSON — After dropping $17 billion on midterm elections, much of it to sell scoundrels bent on crippling democracy to ill-informed citizens, America ought to parallel the dollar with a currency unit that keeps things in perspective. How about the TGT, short for third grade teacher?

A TGT would track teachers’ average starting pay in a nation that uses money to keep score. After falling $2,000 in the last decade, that is $41,000. Hedge-fund hogs — or election-deniers’ lawyers — can earn more in a slow week. Adjusted for inflation, it is less than in the 1970s.

Strict spending limits in a brief European-style campaign could have paid for 400,000 teachers like lovable Miss Lot at Peter Howell Elementary, who inspired us kids in the ‘50s to ask questions, think things through, then trust our own eyes and ears.

TUCSON — Paul Simon’s long-ago South African trip echoed in my head as I flew to Arizona from Paris after votes were finally tallied. Human nature hasn’t changed since Aristotle pegged it. When decent people synchronize, hatemongering demagogy hasn’t got much chance.

“Thank you, Pima County, for saving America,” I said with mock formality to the deeply suntanned rental car lady. She smiled. It was hardly just Arizona. We both knew a nation at war with itself is far from saved. But still. America seems to be inching toward Graceland.

Simon’s original “Graceland” single was about Nashville, but he used the name for 1985 recordings in Soweto that called out social injustice. Concerts in blazing color went far beyond black and white. Joyful sounds and painful lyrics exposed what Apartheid had masked.

The unmissable message: harmony, not wealth, puts diamonds on the soles of our shoes.

Simon ignored a U.N.-imposed cultural boycott, a decision that nudged history hard. Five years later, Nelson Mandela was freed from Robben Island, and a fractured society began to heal.

As the doomsday clock ticks ever louder, a sense of global harmony is growing among Americans who see what is at stake beyond their narrow issues at home.

Young voters made a difference, yet only 27 percent of them cast ballots — 4 percent fewer than in 2018 midterms. Two years remain to make up for decades of insular schooling and news coverage. Americans need to synchronize with the other 95 percent who share a dying planet.

With all its problems, America is hardly comparable to South Africa at its worst. But I see troubling parallels between today’s rural Republicans with radios spotwelded to fact-free bullshit, and rural “rock spiders” — Afrikaners fearful of “replacement” — I covered in the 1980s.

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PARIS — Ukraine faces a potentially nuclear winter. Europe again fears fascism. Taiwan girds for assault. People cry freedom from Iran to Myanmar. And next week a dis-United States may relinquish its shining-city-on-a-hill democracy over $4 a gallon gas.

Americans fixate on prices without considering that the previous president is almost entirely responsible, and nearly every other country suffers from them more. Polls put global climate meltdown far behind. Foreign policy, around which most crises turn, is barely mentioned.

In the final stretch, I heard Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, favored against Stacey Abrams, refer on CNN to “Joe Biden’s inflation.” Whether he is a dope or, more likely, a disingenuous cynic, people like that have no business in public office. Yet look at the Republican field.

These mid-terms are no usual referendum on a party in power. If Republicans prevail, two more years of preposterous big lies, electoral sabotage, censorious ideology and outright terrorism are all but certain to put an unchecked authoritarian in the White House.

Donald Trump has savaged truth, decency and the rule of law. Ron DeSantis and others in the running exploit his tribal know-nothing base, which ignores Biden’s serial successes against lockstep Republican opposition. A fired-up minority wins when apathetic voters opt out.

If Americans don’t look beyond partisan politics, narrow interests, blind ambition, religious fundamentalism and simplistic reporting, U.S. elections could produce the greatest human folly since, as the Book of Genesis has it, Esau gave up his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew.

In 60 years of reporting, I’ve seen nothing close to what is now at stake. In the millions of words that I’ve spewed out over the decades, none have mattered more.

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BAYEUX, France — A hard truth was brutally plain as reporters gathered near the Normandy beaches, a global crime scene in vivid memory, to celebrate their living and mourn their dead. “Never Again!” is an empty promise in the heart of Europe and across an imperiled planet.

In this noble little city that miraculously escaped allied bombing, heart-stopping images and eyewitness accounts made reality crystal clear: humanity is nearly out of time to save itself. Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine onslaught is the worst of it. But there is so much else.

For 29 years, the annual Bayeux Calvados-Normandy War Correspondents Awards has singled out reportage by insightful old pros and gutsy young ones with new skills. This time, entries far surpassed that overworked word of the day: horrific.

The irony defies belief. America waded in to help stop genocidal Nazis from ruling the world. Now a far different country may soon enable a seditious, bigoted, lying, isolationist Trump-besotted minority to destroy a 234-year-old democracy when it is so badly needed.

Elections next month, already corrupted by treachery in Republican-run states, could make the world safe for murderous despots, a fascistic far right and oligarchs who abandon principle for profit. A massive turnout can sweep them into history. And, still, that would only be a start.

Climate calamities push ever-larger human tides to besiege closed borders. But the immediate challenge is conflict. The military-industrial complex Dwight Eisenhower foresaw has waged unwinnable war since the 1960s, full-on or by proxy, with scant regard for millions who suffer.

America, though hardly the only culprit, has the wealth and wherewithal to wage peace. When diplomacy and targeted aid fail, muscular military coalitions need to confront threats before they spiral out of control. Solid up-close reporting is crucial to get that right.

Bayeux winners this year were mostly fresh faces. Ukrainians depicted their own tragedy. A Burkina Faso freelancer described rape and terror in a former bright spot on a dark continent; she wept on a video link at the award ceremony, overcome that the world had finally noticed.

A Sudanese Spiderman enthralled the jury with a 19-minute television piece for the Guardian that ended with optimism. A single brave soul can inspire revolution against tyranny. But not without support from outsiders who care. We’ll get back to Spidey; please read on.

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