Gee, who could have guessed – it turns out that Trump is not a devout Christian after all. It was all an act!!! Are you amazed?

The president’s alliance with religious conservatives has long been premised on the contention that he takes them seriously, while Democrats hold them in disdain. In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion. “My administration will never stop fighting for Americans of faith,” he declared at a rally for evangelicals earlier this year.

But it’s transparently a ploy, given that Trump had never given the slightest hint of religiosity until he decided to become king of Murka.

But in private, many of Trump’s comments about religion are marked by cynicism and contempt, according to people who have worked for him. Former aides told me they’ve heard Trump ridicule conservative religious leaders, dismiss various faith groups with cartoonish stereotypes, and deride certain rites and doctrines held sacred by many of the Americans who constitute his base.

We’re supposed to recoil in disgust at this point but I can’t oblige. I agree with him on this one. If that makes me a trumpish vulgarian on the subject then so be it.

The fraud on the other hand is a whole different matter.

A white house spokeser asked for comment said blah blah plus

The president is also well known for joking and his terrific sense of humor, which he shares with people of all faiths.

Nah. His sense of humor isn’t terrific. He’s not intelligent enough for that.

It helped that Trump seemed to feel a kinship with prosperity preachers—often evincing a game-recognizes-game appreciation for their hustle. The former campaign adviser recalled showing his boss a YouTube video of the Israeli televangelist Benny Hinn performing “faith healings,” while Trump laughed at the spectacle and muttered, “Man, that’s some racket.” On another occasion, the adviser told me, Trump expressed awe at Joel Osteen’s media empire—particularly the viewership of his televised sermons.

It’s very Mark Twain, isn’t it. He’s the Duke and the Dauphin to the life.

The conservative Christian elites Trump surrounds himself with have always been more clear-eyed about his lack of religiosity than they’ve publicly let on.

See? We’ve known that all along. Of course they have – you’d have to be very dense and inattentive to think Trump meant any of it.

Look at this stupid chain of “accused of”s and “previously criticized”s and “branded as”s all linked up to make a hearsay accusation of Wrongthink against…you’ll never guess…a woman. Funny how reliably it’s a woman these days.

A HISTORY professor accused of being transphobic will head a new women’s rights initiative at Oxford University.

Oh accused of; well what more do you need to know. It could be some random crackpot in the pub just before closing, but do let’s make it the basis for a story in the Oxford Mail because hey, it’s only a woman. Also why does she get to be a history professor when the inquisitors on Twitter don’t? What’s so great about her besides brains and education and discipline?

Professor of Modern History at Oxford University Selina Todd is one of the academics who will lead the research programme that was announced earlier this month.

But Prof Todd has previously been criticised by LGBT+ campaigners for holding ‘anti-trans’ views and supporting the group Woman’s Place, which was recently branded as a ‘trans-exclusionary hate group’ by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights.

She’s one of the academics leading the research programme but wait wait wait SOMEBODY SAID SOMETHING.

Why is “somebody said something” even worth a newspaper story? Why do newspapers keep publishing them? The people who say this kind of shit tend to be very stupid and very blinkered and very aggressive toward women so why is it worth solemnly publishing their accusations in newspapers??

It is unclear how the new Women’s Equality and Inequality, which is part of the Oxford Martin Programme, will improve the rights of all women, including trans women, as both Prof Todd and Oxford University did not provide a comment when contacted by the Oxford Mail.

Improving the rights of all women does not entail improving the rights of trans women, because trans women are men. All this insisting that women can’t talk about women’s rights without being interrupted to be told we have to include men in women’s rights is such perverse backward-looking misogynist shit I can barely credit that we’re still arguing about it.

Also, “both X and Y did not” is bad English.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on How DO we put up with it?

Most murdered? Come off it. One look at official homicide statistics should put that to rest, but activists are actively hostile to data. Just as with the religious, statistics and math and facts are not how they came by their beliefs in the first place. Remember, “If your original Hebrew disagrees with my original King James — your original Hebrew is wrong. If your original Hebrew agrees with my original King James, your original Hebrew is right.”

They’ve heard the idea that trans people are being murdered and denied basic rights at a terrifying rate. They’ve heard it a lot. As Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking, Fast and Slow, “People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory.” Because they so easily recall claims of the dire straits of trans people, they are absolutely certain that any stats showing a contrary scenario are false. And now everyone they talk to treats the claim as obviously true.

Whether due to the company they keep or social media siloing, they’ve heard it about trans people more than any other group, and everyone they interact with is of like mind. As Albert Speer wrote:

… in normal circumstances people who turn their backs on reality are soon set straight by the mockery and criticism of those around them, which makes them aware they have lost credibility. In the Third Reich, there were no such correctives, especially for those who belonged to the upper stratum. On the contrary, every self-deception was multiplied in a hall of distorting mirrors, becoming a repeatedly confirmed picture of a fantastical dream world, which no longer bore any relationship to the grim outside world. In those mirrors I could see nothing but my own face reproduced many times over.

John Cleese is on a tear at the moment.

I’m hearing Basil in that one. “Oh I see, it’s my fault is it.”

It’s infuriating but it’s also depressing. The Trump campaign and Cambridge Analytica persuaded black voters in swing states that Trump would be preferable to Clinton. That’s worked out well.

Donald Trump’s 2016 US presidential election campaign has been accused of actively seeking to deter 3.5 million black Americans in battleground states from voting by deliberately targeting them with negative Hillary Clinton ads on Facebook.

By “negative Hillary Clinton ads” they mean “dishonest disparaging” Clinton ads.

According to the investigation, the Trump campaign’s goal was to dissuade them from backing the Democrat entirely, by targeting them with “dark adverts” on their Facebook feeds, which heavily attacked Clinton and, in some cases, argued she lacked sympathy with African Americans.

Unlike Trump, who has all the sympathy in the world, along with understanding and knowledge and a long history of concern and involvement.

The effort is said to have been devised in part by Cambridge Analytica, the notorious election consultant that ceased trading last year following revelations that it used dirty tricks to help win elections around the world and had gained unauthorised access to tens of millions of Facebook profiles.

The whole thing is a criminal enterprise, and here we are.

Bookstores have to be safe spaces!

Don’t they? Isn’t that the whole point of them? Or have I misundertood?

Rabble Books thinks they do.

An Australian bookstore will no longer stock J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, in order to make the shop a “safer space” for customers.

It’s a sad fact about the Harry Potter books that they tend to burst into flames after you’ve read a few pages. No, that’s not it, they’re laced with arsenic. No, wait, they’re contaminated with plutonium. No, I know, there are tigers and rattlesnakes between the pages.

Rabble Books and Games located in Maylands, a suburb of Perth, made the announcement on Facebook this week, saying that it would no longer house Rowling’s books and those written under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith after her latest novel has been labeled as transphobic. The store’s Facebook page has since been deactivated.

The post, which was written by store owner Nat Latter, said the shop would “not put books by transphobes on the shelves” and asked customers for suggested alternatives.

Gee. I wonder if they carry any books by misogynists. Racists? Antisemites? Snobs? Reverse snobs? Criminals? Exploiters? People who put empty milk cartons back in the fridge?

“While stocking a book isn’t an endorsement (good grief, that would be a minefield), and we will always take orders for books that aren’t in stock, there are more worthy books to put on the shelf — books that don’t harm communities and won’t make us sad to unpack them,” a spokesperson for Rabble Books and Games wrote.

Oh, okay, that helps – the books have to be worthy.

Worthy how? Worthy in what sense? Worthy according to whom?

Again…for the fifty thousandth time…I have to point out that is has never worked this way for women. No general bookshop has ever decided not to keep misogynist books on the shelves. That’s no doubt partly because there would be so few books they could keep on the shelves if they did that.

See, contempt for women is just normal, just everyday life. Updike and his buddies are just what literature is. “Transphobia” on the other hand…now that’s evil. People who don’t believe that men can become women by saying the words are worse than misogynist, worse than Nazis, worse than anyone.

The decision follows furious backlash against Rowling in recent months due to her constant attacks on transgender people.

Liar. Who wrote this? [looks] Someone called Serena Sonoma. Well, she’s a liar. Rowling doesn’t “attack” trans people, and what she has said about the ideology around what “trans” means has not been anything like “constant.”

The liar then instantly undercuts her own lie by giving all of two examples of this purported “transphobia,” first last December then “earlier this summer” – so that’s hardly constantly, is it. What Rowling said wasn’t “phobic” anyway, but the “constantly” is an extra layer of destructive lying.

Anyway, skip Rabble Books near Perth if you want to buy a Harry Potter book off the shelf.

Oh jeez.

Uh oh, it seems that billionaire Don hasn’t been paying a huge amount of income tax. You’d think the tariff on the income from all those billions would be quite a high figure, but…

Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed billionaire, paid only $750 in federal income taxes in the year he was elected US president, according to a stunning New York Times investigation that could shake up the presidential election.

My goodness. That’s a very small figure.

The president “paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency”, the paper reported, adding that “in his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

“He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years – largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.”

In all, the paper said, Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years its reporters examined. Many of his businesses, including his golf courses, report significant financial losses – which have helped him to lower his taxes.

He babbled at a “press briefing” today.

“Totally fake news, no. Actually I paid tax. And you’ll see that as soon as my tax returns – it’s under audit, they’ve been under audit for a long time. The [Internal Revenue Service] does not treat me well … they treat me very badly. You have people in the IRS – they treat me very badly.”

You’ll see that as soon as you see his tax returns, which will be never. It’s like that health care bill that we’re always going to see “in two weeks,” which is the same as jam tomorrow.

Pressed on why a billionaire only paid a few hundred dollars in the year he won the presidency, Trump insisted: “First of all I paid a lot, and I paid a lot of state income taxes too. The New York state charges a lot and I paid a lot of money in state. It’ll all be revealed. It’s going to come out but after the audit.”

In two weeks. You can see the taxes in two weeks, and two weeks ago, but never taxes today.

“Even while declaring losses, he has managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by taking tax deductions on what most people would consider personal expenses, including residences, aircraft and $70,000 in hairstyling for television,” the Times reported on Sunday.

Why did the IRS allow it?

“Ivanka Trump, while working as an employee of the Trump Organization, appears to have received ‘consulting fees’ that also helped reduce the family’s tax bill.”

Who the fuck would ever want to “consult” Princess Ivanka about anything? Consult the nearest Barbie doll instead; at least it’s cheap.

The paper added: “Over the past two decades, Mr Trump has paid about $400m less in combined federal income taxes than a very wealthy person who paid the average for that group each year.”

Making America great again.

No, that’s you.

I know GC people believe that people are gifted with some kind of magic, unmeasurable, immutable sexed soul at conception, but there’s just no evidence for that mate

That’s so gaslighty. That is not what gender critical people believe, that is the exact, precise opposite of what gender critical people believe. That’s the whole point. We don’t believe the fairy tale of the magic gender that belies the body, it’s uncritical trans ideology that believes and promotes that silly idea. All we believe is the tautology that a female body is a female body, and there’s nothing magic or unmeasurable about it. We call people who have female bodies “women” and we don’t call people who have male bodies “women.” That’s all; no magic required.

Mate.

There’s an open letter supporting JK Rowling in the Sunday Times:

JK Rowling has been subjected to an onslaught of abuse that highlights an insidious, authoritarian and misogynistic trend in social media.

Rowling has consistently shown herself to be an honourable and compassionate person, and the appalling hashtag #RIPJKRowling is just the latest example of hate speech directed against her and other women that Twitter and other platforms enable and implicitly endorse.

We are signing this letter in the hope that, if more people stand up against the targeting of women online, we might at least make it less acceptable to engage in it or profit from it.

We wish JK Rowling well and stand in solidarity with her.

Signed by:

Ian McEwan, author; Lionel Shriver, author; Griff Rhys Jones, actor; Graham Linehan, writer; Maureen Chadwick, writer; Andrew Davies, writer; Frances Barber, actress; Craig Brown, writer; Alexander Armstrong, actor; Amanda Craig, writer; Philip Hensher, writer; Susan Hill, writer; Jane Thynne, writer; Ben Miller, actor; Simon Fanshawe, writer; James Dreyfus, actor; Frances Welch, writer; Francis Wheen, writer; Arthur Matthews, writer; Aminatta Forna, writer; Joan Smith, writer; Nick Cohen, journalist; Kath Gotts, composer & lyricist; Ann McManus, writer; Eileen Gallagher, writer & producer; Jimmy Mulville, producer; Lizzie Roper, actress; Stella O’Malley, author; Nina Paley, animator; Julie Bindel, journalist; Abigail Shrier, journalist; Rachel Rooney, author; Jane Harris, writer; Tatsuya Ishida, cartoonist; Lisa Marchiano, author; Zuby, musician and author; Debbie Hayton, journalist; Gillian Philip, Author, Jonny Best, musician; Manick Govinda, arts consultant; Russell Celyn Jones, writer; Magi Gibson, writer; Victoria Whitworth, writer; Dr Mez Packer, writer; Grace Carley, producer; Sam Leith, journalist; Malcolm Clark, television producer-director; Shirley Wishart, musician; Charlotte Delaney, writer; Nehanda Ferguson, musician; Justin Hill, writer; Trezza Azzopardi, writer; Birdy Rose, artist; Jess de Wahls, textile artist; Mo Lovatt, writer; Simon Edge, novelist; Tom Stoppard, playwright; and Amanda Smyth, writer

I endorse this message.

I never can figure out how this is supposed to work, this claim that a senator’s or justice’s religion makes no difference to what the senator or justice will do.

Much has been made of Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic faith following her nomination for the supreme court. Some have speculated it may affect her rulings on matters such as abortion and LGBT rights, while others have expressed disquiet about her membership of the secretive People of Praise group.

Why is it “speculation” to think that “Catholic faith” will influence how Barrett rules on abortion? The “Catholic faith” is fanatically opposed to abortion, and correspondingly indifferent to the rights and needs of women, so if you hold “Catholic faith” then that’s what you’re buying into.

Barrett herself has said she will follow the law rather than her own beliefs, and she appears to have a supporter from a prominent Democrat, House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Of course Barrett has said that; she wants the job! Wanting to make abortion illegal is probably part of why she wants it, though probably only a small part.

“It doesn’t matter what her faith is, or what religion she believes in,” said Pelosi who, like Joe Biden and Barrett, is Catholic. “What matters is does she believe in the Constitution of the United States.

But it does. It does matter. There are some believers who can bracket parts of their religions’ commands and claims, but it’s not safe or reasonable to assume that’s the case with all of them.

Sure, why not?

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law on Saturday requiring California to house transgender inmates in prisons based on their gender identity — but only if the state does not have “management or security concerns.”

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation houses men and women in separate facilities. Transgender inmates are often housed based on their sex assigned at birth. Advocates say this is dangerous, particularly for transgender women housed in facilities for men.

That’s so interesting, because you know what’s even more dangerous? Housing women in facilities for men. Which is a pity, because that’s exactly what California is doing here. Women who identify as trans aren’t going to ask to be housed with men, are they, nor are women who don’t identify as trans going to say they do in order to be housed with men. Men, on the other hand – you do the math.

It always fascinates me to see the feverish worry about tragically vulnerable men who identify as trans coupled with complete indifference to vulnerable women.

The law says officers have to ask inmates privately how they identify. That’s it; that’s the hurdle. They say how they identify then they choose which sex they want to be locked up with.

The law says the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation cannot deny those requests solely because of inmates’ anatomy, sexual orientation or “a factor present” among other inmates at the facility.

But the state can deny those requests if it has “management or security concerns.” If a request is denied, the state must give the inmate a written statement explaining the decision and give the inmate a “meaningful opportunity” to object.

The guy who authored the bill says there won’t be many management or security concerns.

“It’s just a false narrative about transgender people and about transgender women in particular that they’re somehow not really women and are just trying to scam their way into women’s bathrooms or facilities in order to do bad things,” [Senator Scott] Wiener said. “Overwhelmingly the people who are being victimized are trans people.”

That “somehow” is so precious – as if he just has no idea why anyone would say a man is not in fact a woman. It’s just a “false narrative” that men are not women. Ok, Senator Wiener, your house is my house, and it’s just a false narrative for you to say it’s somehow not mine.

There’s not a word in the whole piece about the safety of women.

The US health department is throwing away $300 million on a Don’t Worry Be Happy campaign due to run in the weeks leading up to (purely coincidentally) the election. Or to put it slightly less combatively:

The health department is moving quickly on a highly unusual advertising campaign to “defeat despair” about the coronavirus, a $300 million-plus effort that was shaped by a political appointee close to President Donald Trump and executed in part by close allies of the official, using taxpayer funds.

The ad blitz, described in some budget documents as the “Covid-19 immediate surge public advertising and awareness campaign,” is expected to lean heavily on video interviews between administration officials and celebrities…

Because what is more urgent and pressing right now than interviews between Trump’s hacks and “celebrities”?

Senior administration officials have already recorded interviews with celebrities like actor Dennis Quaid and singer CeCe Winans, and the Health and Human Services Department also has pursued television host Dr. Mehmet Oz and musician Garth Brooks for roles in the campaign.

Worth every dime of the 300 MILLION dollars. Which, by the way, is vastly more than HHS or the CDC normally spends on campaigns to inform and advise. It’s not a normal or routine figure at all.

The public awareness campaign, which HHS is seeking to start airing before Election Day on Nov. 3, was largely conceived and organized by Michael Caputo, the health department’s top spokesperson who took medical leave last week and announced on Thursday that he had been diagnosed with cancer. Caputo, who has no medical or scientific background, claimed in a Facebook video on Sept. 13 that the campaign was “demanded of me by the president of the United States. Personally.”

Yes but that’s Donald Trump, so the answer should have been “Oh hell no.”

“The Democrats — and, by the way, their conjugal media and the leftist scientists that are working for the government — are dead set against it,” Caputo told his Facebook followers in the Sept. 13 video. “They cannot afford for us to have any good news before November because they’re already losing. … They’re going to come after me because I’m going to be putting $250 million worth of ads on the air.”

Conjugal???? What are you trying to say, little fella?

The campaign is indeed under investigation by Democrats, who have charged that the massive ad blitz is an attempt to boost Trump’s standing on Covid-19 before the election and have unsuccessfully called on HHS to halt the contract.

…

10 current and former health officials told POLITICO that they have concerns about the campaign’s scope, goals and even how it has been funded — by pulling money out of health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control that are in the midst of fighting the pandemic, rather than working with lawmakers to set up a brand-new advertising effort with congressional oversight, or drawing on substantial internal resources and expertise in running health-related public service campaigns.

It’s not how sick you are, it’s how cheerful you are about it.

The suspect confirms the motive.

A man suspected of stabbing two people with a meat cleaver in Paris has admitted to deliberately targeting the former offices of the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine, French media report.

The man, an 18-year-old born in Pakistan, reportedly linked his actions to the magazine’s recent republication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

I never can understand why religious fanatics don’t just let their god deal with it. Their god is supposed to be all-powerful and perfect, so why does it need their help?

Thinking their god needs human help to eliminate enemies betrays a certain feebleness in the belief department, if you ask me. The goddy murderers might as well be atheists.

The suspect, who was arrested not far from the scene on Friday, had “taken responsibility for his action”, sources told AFP, adding that he placed his actions “in the context of the republication of the cartoons”.

Oh well that’s all right then.

Disquieting.

President Donald Trump this week said he wants to immediately fill the new Supreme Court vacancy because he expects the panel to decide the 2020 presidential election. 

Which is bizarre all by itself because normally the election does that. But wait, there’s more.

On Friday, multiple news outlets reported that Trump intends to nominate Amy Coney Barrett, who would be the third justice on the court to have worked for Republicans directly on the Bush v. Gore case that handed the 2000 election to the GOP. She would be the second installed on the court by Trump.

And working “for Republicans directly on the Bush v. Gore case that handed the 2000 election to the GOP” means working for Republicans who stole the 2000 election.

Earlier this week, Trump refused to say that he would peacefully transfer power if he loses the election in November. He further suggested the Supreme Court will likely decide the election, underscoring the need to fill the seat left open by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.

He says that as part of his frenzied efforts to undermine the election, which he expects to lose.

If Coney is confirmed, she will join two other lawyers from the Republican team that worked on the case that handed the GOP the presidency in 2000. 

Chief Justice John Roberts counseled then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during that election, according to emails. The Los Angeles Times reported that Roberts “traveled to Tallahassee, the state capital, to dispense legal advice” and “operated in the shadows at least some of those 37 days” that decided the election. Roberts has a long record of working to limit voting rights. 

It is a similar story for Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The Miami Herald reported that during the Florida standoff, “Kavanaugh joined Bush’s legal team, which was trying to stop the ballot recount in the state.” Kavanaugh appeared on national television to push for the ruling that halted the statewide recount and handed Bush the presidency. 

What a sour joke this country is.

But nobody ever claimed that. Not ever. We were solemnly assured of it only yesterday. Nobody ever said trans people were “born in the wrong body.”

From the age of two and a half, Sasha has insisted she’ll grow up a girl. She was born in a boy’s body. In his tender observational documentary, film-maker Sébastien Lifshitz’s (Les Invisibles, Bambi, Adolescentes) spends a year following seven-year-old Sasha and her family as they struggle to navigate her gender dysphoria in their provincial French home town.

Maybe it’s a French thing? Everybody knows how zany the French are.

Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume captures Sasha in widescreen, his camera watchful as she pads delicately across the room in ballet class, growing in confidence and expressiveness with each purposeful step. Her teacher is less generous.

Meaning? The reviewer doesn’t elaborate. Perhaps the teacher was actually teaching ballet as opposed to being generous to the born in the wrong body segment of the class.

Also…children who are two and a half say a lot of things, and not all of them are necessarily true or accurate. That can apply even to things the children say about themselves.

Uh oh uh oh The Graun has fallen behind the trend.

Trump’s pick to fill RBG’s seat is a religious fanatic. Awesome.

A current Notre Dame law school professor, 48-year-old Barrett is a devout Catholic and mother of seven children, two of whom were adopted from Haiti and one who is a child with Down syndrome—all attributes that conservatives see as evidence that she will help overturn Roe v. Wade if confirmed. But Barrett brings another resume entry to the table that, while possibly enhancing her appeal to evangelicals, makes her an unusual candidate for the job.

She’s a member of People of Praise, a charismatic covenant community in South Bend, Indiana, that has been criticized by former members for being a religious cult. Though most of its members are Catholic, its practices, including speaking in tongues and faith healing, draw more from fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity than the Vatican. One of its most notable features is the submissive role played by women, some of whom were called “handmaids”—at least until the Handmaid’s Tale aired in 2017, At that point, the group started referring to them as “women leaders.”

Just fucking brilliant.

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Barr seems eager.

Old conventional wisdom: Biden needs to win the popular vote by ~ 3 points to avoid an Electoral College loss

New conventional wisdom: Biden needs to win the popular vote by ~ 5-6 points to avoid it being close enough for Trump to steal.

Welcome to America, everyone. The shining city on a hill. (gag) A beacon of democracy. (eye roll)

On a related note, David Frum had a good Twitter thread recently where he called out the utter nonsense that gets babbled every Inauguration Day, when television talking heads marvel at the “peaceful transfer of power” that occurs, even between rival political factions. Such a uniquely American tradition! Except.. it’s not. Pretty much every other democracy has mastered that whole peaceful transfer of power thing… it’s kind of a basic requirement of being a functional democracy. Those other countries just don’t hold a big spectacle and pat themselves on the back for it. (“Yes, the streets of Ottawa are full today to witness Stephen Harper peacefully hand over the reins of power to Justin Trudeau. What a triumph of democracy! Canadians should be so proud for not shooting each other instead!”)

It WAS genuinely impressive when George Washington opted not to seek a third term, defying the speculation that he would be a monarch in all but name, and at least as impressive when John Adams, defeated after a single term, handed over power to his (then-) bitter rival Jefferson. But that was when America was a mere toddler. It’s not supposed to be an accomplishment any more. The inevitable cooing we’ll hear if (hopefully) Biden peacefully takes over from Trump will be the equivalent of applauding an adult for being potty-trained.

It all boils down to the Senate. Trump and Republican legislators are openly planning ways to steal the election.

So now a dark question arises. What will the US’s increasingly progressive majority do if Republican state officials reinstall Trump in the White House, in defiance of the voters? What will they do if that 6-3 court overturns Roe v Wade and bans abortion across the entire country?

Think for a second how that latter situation will have arisen: it is because the Senate picks the judges, and the Senate enshrines minority rule. With two senators per state, tiny Wyoming (population: 600,000) has the same representation as gargantuan California (40 million). On current trends, 70% of Americans will soon have just 30 senators representing them, while the 30% minority will have 70. When it comes to their right to medical treatment or to rid their streets of military-grade assault weapons, the urban, diverse majority are subject to the veto of the rural, white, conservative minority.

Wyoming has fewer people than Seattle. California has more people than a lot of countries – such as Canada for instance.

How long is that sustainable? How long will a woman in, say, California accept the presence of guns and the absence of abortion rights because that’s what a minority of voters in small, over-represented states wants? Serious people are beginning to ask that question. Gary Gerstle, professor of American history at Cambridge University, says he’s found himself reading about countries that once had democracy but lost it – and that he’s doing that “to understand the future of America”.

Two words: not rosy.