[Mark McDonnell]

If the Channel 4 fact-check report about the hysterectomies turns out to be correct, then that's a good thing, at least, so thank you for posting it, Kevin. I found the story truly disturbing. It is still right, of course, that the allegations were, and continue to be, fully investigated. If they turn out to be any sort of deliberate pre-election shock tactic hyperbole and that becomes widely reported, I hope it doesn't backfire on the Democrats or the wider left in general. And of course, it wouldn’t suddenly make these awful places, or the notion of private for-profit prisons in general, any less abhorrent.

I do think that calling all Trump supporters fascists is probably unhelpful. Because it plays into their (your) hands and strengthens their sense of grievance. But it's no less silly than the tendency of people on the right to call all their opponents Marxists. (The difference there, of course, is that while politically implemented Marxism has led to some Very Bad Things, as conservatives love to point out, its central ideas aren't inherently evil, unlike fascism. Simply put, it’s heart is in the right place). US politics does seem utterly broken right now in its divisiveness. Instinctively, I feel that politics should be fairly boring and that government should consist of serious people quietly engaged in the difficult project of improving the lives of as many people as possible, as fairly as possible. I know. What a thought! To me this comes down to good wages, good public education, free or at least easily affordable health care, a real commitment to environmental issues, everyone having equal rights and opportunities and heavy taxation of the rich. And if we don't like the results we vote 'em out. If pushed, I suppose I'd say in my heart I'm a moderate democratic socialist, though I have a weird phobia about labels in general. Of course in my imagination the world is all kinds of beautiful utopias, but I'm a realist. I'm also a great believer in honesty, and in facts over emotion and rhetoric, in politics. I want my imaginative flights of fancy confined to literature and my own imagination, not out in the real world where the purveyors of them might negatively impact actual human beings. At the moment I feel utterly exasperated with the fantasy worlds, and insults to my intelligence, that the politics of both the right and left often seem to inhabit.

The hypocrisy and nonsense of certain ‘woke‘ worldviews sometimes annoys me, and I know I probably complain about that more here than I do about the right. But that’s because I expect nothing better of the right, and I worry that these things are counter productive to the left. What I see of the right in general, particularly in the US, positively scares me, as it always has. Not all, but far too many of them really are bullies, racists, theocrats, misogynists, homophobes, climate-change deniers and rampantly amoral scorched-earth capitalists. Trump's voters might not all be fascists, though some clearly are. And Trump might not call himself one, even in the unpleasant privacy of his own head, though he clearly courts, and has, the support of white supremacists, notwithstanding any media exaggeration of his Charlottesville comments. What is glaringly obvious to me, from across the ocean, is that Donald Trump is completely unfit to lead a country, due to the fact that he is an opportunistic, empty narcissist, a bully, and a pathological liar. Even if a policy he implemented had some positive effect (I don't know. I don't follow the minutae) I wouldn't be able to see it as anything other than purely accidental, because I genuinely believe, just by observing him, that he's incapable of thinking beyond his own self interest. As Michael put it, he is one of a long line of "the phonies, the liars, the people with a long history of cheating in business, the utter and total bullshit artists". It amazes me that anyone with any intelligence or moral compass can't see this. Getting him out in November is imperative.