Identity Politics

Contrary to what you may have heard or wish to believe about the English-speaking peoples, child detention is what America is. Child detention is what Great Britain is, and it's certainly what Australia is. A third of Americans approve of the Trumpster's policy of separating families and keeping the children in cages, and John McCain must have a very rosy view of the institution of slavery if he genuinely believes that breaking up dark-skinned families is "contrary to principles and values upon which our nation was founded." Worries about lost votes or emotive pictures are beside the point: from single mothers through welfare scroungers to unauthorised wogs, attacking the vulnerable to bamboozle the unthinking is what modern democracy is all about. It is what we do, what we have always done. It is who we are.