Wisconsin, Two Trails One at a Time

There were Several trails I wanted to take in Wisconsin. This is about one of them.

The Wild Goose Trail starts in Fon Du Lac and goes south for about 34 miles. The real issue is that it takes about 2.5 hours to get there from where I live. That isn't negligible. The trail starts in-town and is a series of off the road trail and on road travel. It is well marked and also part of the circle route around the town. What I knew about Fon Du Lac was from the occasional times we traveled to the commercial areas with friends who lived up there at the time. This really didn't get into that area.

Then just north of where we had stopped for gas and breakfast, the trail went off to two different dircctions. I had taken a long time staring at this trail on the maps so I knew where to go. Thank the Maker for Google Maps. 

As a side note, when we stopped at the Kwik Trip coming into town, Tracy was seething because people weren't wearing their masks. She views that as extremely selfish so it was a fun stop.

When the trail finally started after a trip over the interstate, it transitioned to crushed stone and stayed that way the entire trip.

There wasn't anything really of any note about the path. It was flat and the first 5 miles or so had an annoying set of grooves in the ruts of the trail. I certainly didn't want that to continue. And it didn't. The first main road I came across, it stopped.

I was noticing that on certain stretches, it was hard going. I plodded along but I had to do it in a lower gear. I'm certain that the grade was slightly uphill but it was a hard way to go. I knew overall, I was going up a couple hundred feet from start to finish, but that is spread out. But it was noticable. 

My biggest takeaway was finding this about 2 miles in from the last road, along the most deserted part of the path. It is a little, free library. The idea is that you can stop to read a book, or take a book if you leave a book. There wasn't anything in it except a birds nest in the bottom cabinet but I love the idea. Too bad it wasn't kept up. It was a glorious place to put it.

Later in the ride, I came across a patch of tiger lilies. I grew up with them and I am surprised at the patches I find in odd areas in the upper midwest.

At the end of the official trail, the Glacial River Trail kicks in. It really is just along a road for a bit and through the small town of Clyman. Then, for a couple of miles, there's a paved path alongside 26 and with the northern breeze, I screamed along that path. I was in the highest gear and I could actually outrun the red-winged blackbirds that tried to attack me ceaselessly along the route. Tracy picked me up and we went to lunch. I gave serious consideration to keep going along the trail, but it was 27 miles to the end and I just didn't have that in me. I figured I'd already gone 40+ all told and I was done. After getting lost in the neighborhoods of Fort Atkinson, we made our way home.

Covid Stuff

Reposting: Dr. Fauci's plain spoken advice:

“Chickenpox is a virus. Lots of people have had it, and probably don't think about it much once the initial illness has passed. But it stays in your body and lives there forever, and maybe when you're older, you have debilitatingly painful outbreaks of shingles. You don't just get over this virus in a few weeks, never to have another health effect. We know this because it's been around for years, and has been studied medically for years.

Herpes is also a virus. And once someone has it, it stays in your body and lives there forever, and anytime they get a little run down or stressed-out they're going to have an outbreak. Maybe every time you have a big event coming up (school pictures, job interview, big date) you're going to get a cold sore. For the rest of your life. You don't just get over it in a few weeks. We know this because it's been around for years, and been studied medically for years.

HIV is a virus. It attacks the immune system and makes the carrier far more vulnerable to other illnesses. It has a list of symptoms and negative health impacts that goes on and on. It was decades before viable treatments were developed that allowed people to live with a reasonable quality of life. Once you have it, it lives in your body forever and there is no cure. Over time, that takes a toll on the body, putting people living with HIV at greater risk for health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, bone disease, liver disease, cognitive disorders, and some types of cancer. We know this because it has been around for years, and had been studied medically for years.

Now with COVID-19, we have a novel virus that spreads rapidly and easily. The full spectrum of symptoms and health effects is only just beginning to be cataloged, much less understood.

So far the symptoms may include:

Fever

Fatigue

Coughing

Pneumonia

Chills/Trembling

Acute respiratory distress

Lung damage (potentially permanent)

Loss of taste (a neurological symptom)

Sore throat

Headaches

Difficulty breathing

Mental confusion

Diarrhea

Nausea or vomiting

Loss of appetite

Strokes have also been reported in some people who have COVID-19 (even in the relatively young)

Swollen eyes

Blood clots

Seizures

Liver damage

Kidney damage

Rash

COVID toes (weird, right?)

People testing positive for COVID-19 have been documented to be sick even after 60 days. Many people are sick for weeks, get better, and then experience a rapid and sudden flare up and get sick all over again. A man in Seattle was hospitalized for 62 days, and while well enough to be released, still has a long road of recovery ahead of him. Not to mention a $1.1 million medical bill.

Then there is MIS-C. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Children with MIS-C may have a fever and various symptoms, including abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes, or feeling extra tired. While rare, it has caused deaths.

This disease has not been around for years. It has basically been 6 months. No one knows yet the long-term health effects, or how it may present itself years down the road for people who have been exposed. We literally *do not know* what we do not know.

For those in our society who suggest that people being cautious are cowards, for people who refuse to take even the simplest of precautions to protect themselves and those around them, I want to ask, without hyperbole and in all sincerity:

How dare you?

How dare you risk the lives of others so cavalierly. How dare you decide for others that they should welcome exposure as "getting it over with", when literally no one knows who will be the lucky "mild symptoms" case, and who may fall ill and die. Because while we know that some people are more susceptible to suffering a more serious case, we also know that 20 and 30-year-olds have died, marathon runners and fitness nuts have died, children and infants have died.

How dare you behave as though you know more than medical experts, when those same experts acknowledge that there is so much we don't yet know, but with what we DO know, are smart enough to be scared of how easily this is spread, and recommend baseline precautions such as:

Frequent hand-washing

Physical distancing

Reduced social/public contact or interaction

Mask wearing

Covering your cough or sneeze

Avoiding touching your face

Sanitizing frequently touched surfaces

The more things we can all do to mitigate our risk of exposure, the better off we all are, in my opinion. Not only does it flatten the curve and allow health care providers to maintain levels of service that aren't immediately and catastrophically overwhelmed; it also reduces unnecessary suffering and deaths, and buys time for the scientific community to study the virus in order to come to a more full understanding of the breadth of its impacts in both the short and long term.

I reject the notion that it's "just a virus" and we'll all get it eventually. What a careless, lazy, heartless stance.”

My Latest Addiction

OK. I'm not sure why or how I got into this. The only thing I can think of is my tendency to watch something new and different. I might have read a few articles in my weird and twisted news feed about Korean dramas. In any case, here I am. Hooked. To soap operas. In a language I don't know.

I've thought about it. I wanted to understand why I liked these so much. It must be tickling some part of my brain and what is it. They are sometimes contrived, sometimes goofy, some of the things I find unforgivable in most other shows. What in the world is going on with me?

I think I've figured it out. It's a mix of things. I'm going to open my noodle a bit here, so please be kind.

1) I think the audience for these shows are women. Now, these don't pass the Bechdel Test at all. But it isn't just the women's conversation that revolves around the opposite gender. The men's conversations and actions also are focused on women. So relationships are usually the focus. But with the audience being women, they are written differently. The women are intelligent. These aren't women that have no aspirations. They want to be successful. They want to be educated. They aren't written for easy disposal. So I want to see stories about intelligent women. I'm drawn to them. These provide the women's side of life as well as the men's.

2) These are romantic stories. I love those things. It wasn't until later in life when I fully embraced that part of me. I get emotional about love and loss. That doesn't mean I don't suck at it, I do. I still struggle and fall all over words, but it doesn't make me any less of a man or person because I acknowledge that part of me. And these men in these stories cry, sometimes profoundly so. If their love dies, it clearly affects them. I still don't know if that this isn't part of the female fantasy of these shows or if Korean culture actually accepts this or even just acknowledges it as a goal, but it is there. The picture above is from Gaurdian: The Lonely and Great God. It is a story of a man cursed to roam the earth until he finds his true love, and she actually is the one that has to kill him. Lots of emotion in a story like that. Lots of love, betrayal and loss. And they portray it.

3) Asain actors and actresses are attractive. That's my own deal. Nothing objective about it.

4) They do a good job of portraying frustrations with dating and relationships. You hold back things you shouldn't. You don't say things you should. This is the reaction I had with 500 Days of Summer when I first watched it. Finally, a well-written show about the frustrations and idiocy of dating and just all the things that can go wrong, and go right. 

5) A lot of these rotate around ghosts, the supernatural, or food or some combination. I think this is the culture filtering through, and I like seeing how other people see the world. I think they have a much healthier attitude towards food than we do.

6) These are long-form stories. They run about 16+ hours total. While that is long, it does let you get to really understand the characters. You start to care about them. You sometimes can't get that in a 2 hour movie and if the story goes several seasons like in America, you run out of things to say. While there is a lot of filler, they do tend to keep the story going, albeit with lots of side-quests.

If you want, I can give you what I have watched. there are lots and lots on Netflix, a few on Hulu and a good repository on viki.com. That last one requires an account but it is mostly free. You just have to deal with the ads. I haven't gotten to the point where I'm willing to pay more for them. Plus, with the library on Netflix, there's enough to keep me busy.

The Illinois and Michigan Canal

Several years ago I biked the Hennepin Canal and after that, I found out the I & M Canal had a similar trail. Two years ago, I took a Sunday and traveled down there on my motorcycle to follow the trail to see if it was any good. I don't recall making a post on it. I think I traveled the length (on surface streets) from Rockdale to Ottawa and saw the aqueduct over the Fox. 

So I set the goal last year to bike it. I didn't make it.  I think all I did was do the Tunnel Hill Trail. I was really disappointed with that year. I didn't feel like I did anything. So this year I set out to change all that.

After a bit of family drama, I set out on June 25th to do the path. Started about 7:00am from the Rockdale trailhead. 

Shortly after I began, I went up a rise and over some train tracks. You see so much broken infrastructure on these trails. There were no tracks to either side of the trail, just those on the trail itself.

I shortly came up to Channahon that has an interesting complex. There is a lock with a lockmaster's house still sanding at the one side of the junction with the DuPage River, a dam to set the water level, and another lock on the other side of the river back into the canal.

So, I went around the horn there, still no sign of Tracy, and where the Kankakee River and the DesPlains River meet, it becomes the Illinois River. I didn't know that before. I kept trudging along the path and saw a sign for the Dresden lock and dam. Evidently, there is also a ghost town there. So I took a few pictures. Tracy called me to tell me she was at Channahon and that I didn't have my location sharing on. So I fixed that situation and Tracy told me she'd meet me in Morris because there wasn't a whole lot of places where she could meet me otherwise.

After a little bit, you travel through Aux Sable that is a ghost town and has an aqueduct, lock, and lockmaster's house still intact.

I might add that this is a beautiful little park in the middle of nowhere. If you ever have an afternoon when you want to take a bit of a drive, I can't recommend this enough. It has a couple of picnic tables and bathrooms. I don't think you can enter the house.

The trail was excellent up to Morris. I can't complain about that at all. I had made it about a third of the way at this point (Morris). This was a great experience up to this point.  It kind of went south after Morris.

Case in point, there was a bridge out. So the path just stopped. No signs on where to go. So I had to use surface streets to get to the other side. And I saw this cool abandoned building.

The trail to Seneca was fairly nice. It was completely wooded and was only highlighted by what sounded like a shooting range. I could envision some Illinois militia shooting into the woods to take out the granola bikers on the trail. Luckily after investigation, it was facing the other way, so it was okay.

There was a nice little bridge I went under. 

There was a little park in Seneca and Tracy had a sandwich waiting for me. I was thankful, but I was also starting to get tired. The next path to Marseilles went bad quickly. It was an uncomfortable gravel road that transitioned to a two-track to a primitive two-track. No mowing. When it came out to a road, there was a small sign to the north to a section of path that was not maintained at all. There were trees over the path that I tried to move with no luck. I kept eying the road just to the south and why didn't they put the trail there. It was industrial, so maybe they didn't want people walking on it, but then take care of the path! 

Still, it was kind of interesting. The building had three railroad spurs that went directly into the work areas. I later saw on maps that it was a tubing manufacturing shop. I was curious if they did railroad work considering the cars I saw in there.

I had spent some time going through Marseilles a few years previous. It is a cute little town. There are a couple of locks located in the town with the canal mostly dry. The path was non-existent. It looks like no bikers had been through there for years.

The path from Marseilles to Ottawa was primitive. It was moist and dark. I think the path was actually in the canal at that point. 

Once into Ottawa, the path became maintained and soon the aqueduct over the Fox River came into view.

There was a park in Ottawa where Tracy met me. It was nice. I was starting to run out of steam, but I had 23 miles left. I wanted to do this. There were a couple of very nice locks along the path out of town. They were quite separated from the town but well maintained. I want to add that the trail at one point had potential. There were mowed sections where you could camp. There were a few shelters along the way as well as benches and garbage cans. It could have been something nice at one time. Clearly, the fact that the state is broke is hurting this kind of resource.

Then I struggled after this. The path went down to a 3 inch wide path. It had been mowed, it looked like last year, and was strewn with sticks and junk. After Buffalo Rock parking, there was an active "Mowing" sign. I now was riding on three inches of grass, sticks and all on top of the path. It was very hard moving. I did come across the tractor mowing. It was actually mowing the trees at that point. It had an articulated arm and could mow anywhere it darn well wanted. Still, it was miles of hard riding. 

Then...the path stopped. There was a fence across the path. All I could think of was having to ride back the last 5 miles to the road. I saw a little arrow pointing to the side. OK...it went down quickly. I squeezed the brakes hard before I went into the creek at the bottom. Crap. Do I have to wade across? Plus, it was a disgusting yellow color. For all I knew, it was toxic waste. Then I looked to the side and saw a wood footbridge. Barely. I edged across the path hoping the bridge wouldn't flip. I went up narrow path and up onto the main path again. More mowed crap.

The path eventually turned into a pothole-strewn road. It was horrible. Jarring. And then I got into Utica. No real signs as to where the path went. I was close to calling Tracy and tell her I was done. She was 5 miles away in LaSalle. I could see her on my map. I did find the park/trailhead and it was a road all the way to LaSalle. It was filled with potholes too, but someone decided to fill the potholes with pea gravel. That slowed me down and I was already running on fumes. I eventually got to the trailhead in LaSalle where Tracy helped me get the bike on the car. She must be used to me not being able to move after a ride. 

I did it. 63 miles. A personal best. A record I have no issues having stand for some time.

I'm a Liberal - Lori Galligher

I'm a liberal, but that doesn't mean what a lot of you apparently think it does. Let's break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I'm getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. PERIOD.

2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that's interpreted as "I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all." This is not the case. I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes "let people die because they can't afford healthcare" a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.

3. I believe education should be affordable. It doesn't necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I'm mystified as to why it can't work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

4. I don't believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don't want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can't afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow believing that makes me a communist.

5. I don't throw around "I'm willing to pay higher taxes" lightly. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" -- I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on me or mine.

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege -- white, straight, male, economic, etc. -- need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized.

13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is the enforcement of present laws and enacting new, common sense gun regulations. Got another opinion? Put it on your page, not mine.

14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you're using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?

15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.

16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I'm a liberal because I think we should take care of each other. That doesn't mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don't believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved.

THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S.

THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT
Irish Times
April 25, 2020
By Fintan O’Toole

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicenter of the pandemic.

As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”

It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.
If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.

Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?

It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

Abject surrender
What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.
Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.

In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.

The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.
Fertile ground

But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.

There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.

Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.

And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.

That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.

And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.

Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.

Trump From a Brit

Someone asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?"

Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England, wrote this magnificent response:

"A few things spring to mind.

Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.

For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.

So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever.

I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.

But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is - his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.

And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults - he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.

Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.

Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.

And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.

Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.

He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.

He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.

That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.

There are unspoken rules to this stuff - the Queensberry rules of basic decency - and he breaks them all. He punches downwards - which a gentleman should, would, could never do - and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless - and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority - perhaps a third - of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
* Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
* You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.

After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.

He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.

In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws - he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:

'My God… what… have… I… created?

If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set."