Citizens emerge from the woodwork and claim the right to bear arms against anyone they deem to be not on the same page as them.
These villainous vigilantes place their freedoms above all other rights and obligations.
Even above the ten commandments of Christianity that most of them claim to believe in.
The whiff of cordite is in the air, threatening to usurp the alcoholic odour of hand sanitiser.
Boogaloo boys and others wander the streets of US towns and cities dressed in paramilitary clothes and armed to the teeth with outlandish weaponry.
As tempers flare over racist atrocities, so the orchestrated insanity gains in intensity.
All of this plays to the crude theatre of the surreal that American politics has become.
I can hardly bring myself to tune into news bulletins for fear that the madness has been further ramped up.
I try to occupy myself with distractions, today I finally framed two Japanese ink paintings that I made in 1999.
Whilst I looked for pins to fix picture hooks to the wall with I came across a gold wedding ring in the bottom of a tin of assorted DIY bric-a-brac.
I have no idea how it came to be there, nor who it belonged to.
I’ve not opened this tin for a good twenty years, but this piece of 9 carat gold weighs in at seven grams.
Scrap 9ct gold currently fetches up to £18 per gram so that’s a cool £120 I never knew I had.
Luck it seems is unequally distributed around the globe.
I cannot stop the thoughts of bullets severing spinal chords that enter my fevered brain. Not even this joyous piece of serendipity can supplant the feelings of horror that overwhelm me as I watch Trump’s Red Death Masque unfold minute by minute, lie by lie.
The situation is grossly obscene, somebody or something, please take me out of this mindset, away from the pornography of ritual anti democracy and unconstitutionality as performed by four five and his perverse family on a daily basis.
Unfortunately I know that when I awake tomorrow it won’t be over.
Sure enough I wake to news that a seventeen year old boy has opened fire on unarmed protestors in Wisconsin.
I worry for all my good friends in America.
The fork tongued ghoul exhorts his followers to call for twelve more years. Twelve more years to wage war on his own people, sow division between wasps and everyone else.
The first lady glides onto my TV swathed in khaki and delivers the most egregious speech calling on people to pull together whilst her husband sends in the national guard.

Reason, democracy, trust,
These things lie trashed in the dust,
Bile poured by unbottled djins,
State fabric smashed like ninepins,
All the rednecks drink it up,
Yet they too lap hemlock cup.
Empire’s end, never pretty,
Nihilists bring mendacity,
One aim, protect privilege,
Rob, lie, burn, spurn tutelage,
Announce new normal, rain chaos,
Wave sweet reason adiós,
Dream’s over, now demons bask,
In light from Don’s blood red masque.

Harry Rogers, ranting in the Yellow Room, 27th August 2020.