They have appeared in the California scrubland like faceless Easter Island statues; eight slabs of concrete and metal standing up to 30ft high. To test their strength, these prototype sections for President Trump’s wall are currently being attacked by jackhammers and saws — and attacked from elsewhere too. Last week the Bishop of Liverpool spoke darkly of “a system which builds walls instead of bridges”. This follows various wall-bashing statements from the Pope: the Christian calling is “to not raise walls but bridges”; “a person who thinks only about building walls and not building bridges is not Christian.”
If you’re ever groping for a piety, reach for walls v bridges. Isaac Newton’s “we build too many walls and not enough bridges” has since been paraphrased