U.S. President Donald Trump, it is clear, presides over a regime of untruth and personally inhabits a realm of fantasy. But some of his critics have fallen prey to illusions of their own about the United States and the world before Trump.
Take, for instance, Trump's cruel disregard for the suffering of children caught up in his crackdown on immigration. It provoked many to charge him with violating "American values." Such condemnation obscures the fact that the U.S. was, from the late 19th century onward, the international pioneer of restrictive immigration policies. The Nazis, among others, sought to learn from America.
Closer to our own time, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama also pursued hardline policies on immigration while in the White House. Following a surge of immigration from Central America in 2014, the Obama administration opened "family detention centers" and even held unaccompanied immigrant children at a military base in San Antonio, Texas.