APOLOGISTS FOR THE UNSPEAKABLE

Since last Thursday I have been wary of talking to the regular cigar smokers. Too many of them, as it turns out, are okay with concentration camps -- as well as, presumably, children dying in custody -- but object furiously to calling those places "concentration camps".


Re-education facilities? Hotels with constraints? Latino pens? People Parking Lots? Temporary Housing? Stationary Orbits? Summer Homes For the Footsore? Tanforan Assembly Centers? Manzanariums?

Minimum security with golf and tennis?


Jeff, who is my age, responded with a long farkakte meise about a North African criminal in Toronto when I used the term "concentration camp". Which is all very well Jeff, but somewhere along the way you lost me.
As well as any respect I might have had for you.
And your basic humanity.

In my version of English, we call the places where ICE warehouses far too many people in too little space under horrible conditions with deliberate ill-treatment "concentration camps". It seems accurate because people who are considered "undesirable" because of their legal status, ethnicity, and national origins, are "concentrated" there with armed guards and fences.

It's only a matter of time before disease and malnutrition start taking a toll.
As well as abuse by the guards (already reported).
Concentration camps.



The word "concentration camp" came in to existence to describe the facilities that the British used to break the back of Afrikaner (Boer) resistance. Basically, it was a means of controlling the local Dutch-descended population after diamonds had been discovered. So you'll understand that the reality is likely to have a certain frisson of disquiet for Dutchmen. It means something. We remember that.
Almost like salt on a wound.


Konsentrasiekamp
Concentratiekamp
俘虜収容所 ('Furyo shūyōsho')
Konzentrationslager
Campo de concentración


Do you really think describing it as an unsafe overfilled badly run temporary detention facility with substandard shelter, sanitary conditions, and food, meant by government policy to instill fear among members of certain ethnic groups, is any better?




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