I was once an angry young man in the beat generation. Now I'm still angry, but I feel utterly beaten, and I'm not young anymore

As a 57 year old bordering on the alcoholic, almost deaf and an insomniac, I'm sitting at 3am in my office just up the hill from the river in the wild upper reaches of the Tees Valley. And I’ve seen far too much of the world for my liking.  Skipping from the chequered and gaudy, to the deliciously sublime and the uniquely ridiculous. When I was a bairn I escaped from domestic dysfunctionality by watching dystopian fiction. Programmes that showed a twisted world where bad things happened. I'm a child of the early 70's who grew up after the swinging 60's had died, during the Yom Kippur war and before Thatcher, with a Stuart Henry Radio Luxemburg 208 soundtrack of Flintlock, Jake Thakray and Mike Harding playing in the background. If you’re younger than me you won’t remember any of these, the ubiquitous Doctor Who (Tom Baker incarnation of course), the fabulously proto-woke Tomorrow people, the spillings of Quatermass, the abject hopelessness of whiskey fuelled policing being laid bare for all to see in the Sweeney and of course the terrifying Children of the Stones with its equally terrifying opening credits - if you want a front row seat into my therapy sessions, all of these are probably on YouTube. 

I had no idea and could not have predicted that in my brandy-soaked dotage that dystopian fiction would slip off the shelves and be transformed daily into the News. 

These days I find that every morning I wake up from fractured sleep at daft o'clock, put on my PC and wonder what in the name of Shatner the Shitehouse in the Whitehouse has been up to today. I tend to watch DW, France24 or even Al Jazeera. I have long ago given up on the BBC - a channel so lost now that it even censors David Tennant's lame roast of the Donald in the BAFTA's for fear of upsetting the Mandarin Moron. In the grim reality that is 21st-century politics, Donald Trump is the cartoon Villain that somehow won the lottery. The turd that won’t flush. The B list reality TV show host with a string of bankruptcies, alimonies and a cameo appearance with McAuley Caulkin. Each day, the news seems more like a surreal and increasingly bizarre South African Tom Sharpe novel, where the story twists and turns with ever more ridiculous and improbable outcomes. It's a Theatre of the absurd.

Trump's life and career lurches from one WTFup to the next, making it almost impossible to separate fact from fiction. And so, as we wake up to yet another day as the Tangerine Shitgibbon incoherently wombles along from self-inflicted crisis to self-inflicted crisis like the Head Ranger in the Dunning Kruger National Park, let’s take a moment to ponder what today's ridiculousness might hold. 

Donald Trump 2.0 is beyond satire and parody. How the fuck did that happen? 

Trump 1.0 ended with an insurrection based on a lie that stuck out not only because it was an attempted coup, but because it was headed by someone who looked like if Jamiroquoi had joined the Hitler Youth. His second presidency is rapidly transforming into a bizarre rollercoaster ride of self-aggrandisement and chaos, and now plays out like a daily soap opera of political whathefuckery. And I’m hooked! It's like the don't go into the cellar moment in an 80's betamax under the counter video nasty. The only thing American I haven’t boycotted is popcorn. It’s like America! The final series. I mean the twists and turns are epic. I thought there might have been a spin off series where the Donald was in Prison but instead they put him back in the Whitehouse. The writers are genius. It’s like put 50p in the monkey and see what happens next. 

And it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious. This muppet is the drunk at the bar you get to say stuff, only he has the nuclear launch codes and seems hell bent on destroying the US and throwing everyone he can under a bus. The Donald is a truth free, principle free, morality free zone who's self awareness must cry itself to sleep at night. 

So if yesterday's news seemed outrageous, today’s will be a head-spinning escalation of the surreal, perhaps involving the Mango Mussolini making statements so nonsensical that they would fit right into the plot of the above mentioned Sharpe novel, like Mrs Hazelstones black rubber room or Colstable Els as a dog, where nothing makes sense, but somehow everything is believable. It's Bad boy Bubby escaping the gasometer and fronting the band in an Aussie music bar. It's Rhubarb and Custard on spice, only it's on primetime TV. 

The idea that Donald Trump is merely a flamboyant businessman or reality TV star who stumbled into politics is one that has long been debunked by countless political analysts, but it still resonates in some quarters. I mean assuming the voting booths weren’t rigged he was actually elected wasn’t he? However, the truth, now becoming undeniable, is far stranger than any fiction. For decades, there have been whispers about Trump's long-standing connections to Russia, and in recent years, those whispers have become shouts. In fact, if we were to give credence to the growing body of evidence, Trump has been a KGB asset for over four decades. This revelation, as improbable as it seems, is now accepted by a significant portion of the political establishment. It might just be that the Americans have inadvertently elected the Manchurian candidate. What would be the best way for Russia to take out the US? Put it’s man in the Oval office of course. 

So how did this all start? Trump's first forays into the international business world, back in the 1980s, were funded and influenced by a series of shady Russian oligarchs, many of whom had close ties to the Soviet government. Trump’s eagerness to woo Russian money was well-documented, as was his odd reluctance to confront Russian interference in American politics during his presidency. His son, Donald Trump Jr., once gleefully declared that the Trump Organization had received “all the funding we need from Russia,” a statement so chilling in hindsight that it should have been a glaring warning sign to anyone with a passing understanding of geopolitics. Read Krebbs and O'Connell if you want to peel away this onion. 

What’s even more concerning is the fact that, over the years, Trump’s associates—including Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone, have been deeply involved in the kinds of backroom dealings that would make a junta blush. Manafort’s history with Russian-backed Ukrainian oligarchs, Flynn's dealings with Russian officials, and Stone’s enthusiastic promotion of Russian interests were just the tip of the iceberg. But this information wasn't enough to derail Trump’s ambitions, as the media and the public seemed to be endlessly distracted by his chaotic statements and scandals, each more bizarre than the last. It's an irony that the MAGA lot, the people who voted for him say that they did because they wanted to stick it to the man. That Biden was dictator and that the US was authoritarian. Well, these are exactly the Pandoras box they’ve opened. Be careful what you wish for. Trump is everyone of those things and more. And now he’s currently dismantling every safeguard the US has had to protect people from, well, people like Donald Trump. 

All the absurdity of the 45th and 47th Presidency suddenly all makes sense when the penny drops. The notion that Trump is some kind of secret KGB agent—his activities directed by Putin's inner circle over several decades—is becoming more believable. After all, what else explains the inexplicable sycophancy towards Vladimir Putin, a man who not only masterminded the Kremlin's destabilization of global politics but also had a deep interest in Trump’s rise to power? It's likely that Trump's role as a Russian asset was strategic, carefully cultivated over years of business dealings, backroom negotiations, and a steady stream of financial transactions. Trumps grip on American politics remains surprisingly firm, with Trump controlling the narrative from his own chaotic orbit. His influence is as ridiculous as it is potent. Every news cycle brings another headline about his legal troubles, his ongoing influence in the Republican Party, or his incessant rants on the most preposterously and inappropriately titled ‘Truth Social’. The Donald wouldn’t recognise the truth if it was wearing his slippers. Perhaps today, he will continue his campaign of “whataboutism,” decrying any investigation into his myriad corrupt activities while simultaneously launching a fresh round of attacks on his political opponents. Expect another tweet, sorry, Truth: further attacking the “deep state,” while the rest of the world watches in utter disbelief. At the same time, the Whitehouse continues to serve as a revolving door of Trump cronies, each trying to ride the coattails of the Mango Mussolini in hopes of a future political career. The daily spectacle, now routinely covered by all corners of the media. Take, for example, the repeated spectacle of Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, appearing on TV to make increasingly surreal statements about election fraud, his hair dye dripping down his face like some grotesque symbol of America’s political collapse. Or perhaps the day will bring another round of infighting among Trump’s supporters, as they tear each other apart for favour and the scraps from his discarded bigmac. 

At this point, it feels as though we’ve entered a new phase of Trump’s reign, a phase in which every day is marked by political farce, and the most improbable outcomes seem not only possible but inevitable. Will he announce another run for the presidency? Will he abolish elections? Will his rallying cries grow louder and more dangerous, feeding into the cult of personality that has kept his base fervently loyal? Who knows? In the words of the bard, never underestimate the power of fucking idiots in big groups. One thing is certain: Donald Trump’s impact on American politics will be felt for generations. Whether it’s the near-daily wankspannerisms in the Oval Office, his ties to Russian intelligence, or his unrelenting war on reality itself, it’s clear that his legacy is already solidified as one of the most bizarre, improbable, and downright comical in history. By comical I mean comical in a dark way, like the Joker. And no one is laughing. 

So I continue to watch the news with growing disbelief. That's when I'm not writing articles that no one will read to massage my own sanity. Now, let’s have a look at YouTube and see if they have that terrifying theme tune off Follyfoot that made me hide behind the sofa as a five year old.