Jesus, Krist

It remains utterly incredible - and profoundly troubling - to me that that thin-skinned, power-crazed fascist apologist is spouting his inflammatory rhetoric and throwing his toddler tantrums not on the political margins but from within the Oval Office. What's even more appalling, though, is that his behaviour - most recently, demanding "domination" over aggrieved Black Lives Matter protesters and ordering police to fire teargas and rubber bullets at those inadvertently standing in the way of a grotesquely cynical photo op - is still being received approvingly by large numbers of Americans, including some who you would have thought (or hoped) were decent and rational.

Quite how anyone - let alone a former member of a celebrated punk band - could claim that in his Rose Garden speech yesterday Trump "knocked it out of the park" is beyond me. And yet, according to Nirvana's Krist Novoselic, the president's words were laudably "strong and direct", aimed at defusing the tension and violence. This, despite the fact that Trump barely alluded to George Floyd and glossed over police brutality and endemic racism entirely, preferring instead to threaten to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would permit the use of the US military against the country's own people - and despite the fact that, as he spoke, only a few blocks away, police were actively demonstrating just how much of "an ally of all peaceful protesters" he really is.

When Novoselic - who went further, muttering about "leftist insurrection" - was subsequently called out for his comments by disbelieving fans, he insisted that his Facebook page "is not a parody account - and certainly not a partisan echo chamber. I prefer to think for myself thank you." He appears to have mistaken rank stupidity for bold independence of thought.

It pains me to say it, but it seems my generation's Smiths now have their Morrissey.