THICK END OF THE WEDGE
Good-guy comic heroes are long gone
God help you in Trump’s America if you’re poor or sick, or black or Mexican or a woman, writes Peter Bruce
President Trump. It’s hard to say out loud, but it is what it is. All the analysis in the world will not make it feel better. My bubble has finally burst. I grew up in a world recovering from a long war. My dad was in it, seconded to the Royal Navy. We won. He witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. For young me, the British embodied all the polite and sensible qualities of magnanimous victors. The Americans were the good guys. I read Archie comics, and Superman. It was the land of the free, rational and rich, powerful and fun. And in my SA, they were our friends and we were on the right side. The Russians occupied half of Europe and in China, Mao Zedong closed off his country from the world and drove millions of his citizens to their graves. I should have known about the bubble, of course. I’d ignored, or rationalised, my democratic SA sidling up to the Russians and Chinese. Perhaps they weren’t so bad. Hardly even communist anymore, really. I told everyone who asked that th...
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