Science-fiction writers and movie screenplays often choose the parallel universe narrative to write about dystopian futures, and how things can go wrong if you take an alternative route to work or stop to talk to someone you normally wouldn’t.
What is unfolding in the United States under President Donald Trump seems very much along those lines. Not only is there an air of unreality about the whole situation, but also a sense that events are rapidly progressing towards a tipping point, with increasingly hardline and violent responses, both from his administration and from those it seeks to control.
There can be little doubt Trump is actively trying to up the ante when it comes to the rioting in Los Angeles. He detests California and what he sees it as standing for, a bastion of liberal thinking and "wokeist" philosophies, with a large migrant population and run by leaders with guts enough not to bow down before him.
As we have seen during the past week, the president appears ready to stop at nothing to stir up trouble in the state and to make an example of it.
Fortunately, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass are wise to Trump’s tactics, although they find themselves in the awkward position of having to fight the president and his administration while also having to protect people and property from rioting and looting.
The detention and arrests of allegedly illegal immigrants on the streets by thuggish and enabled Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers started the protests. Trump’s calling in of the National Guard, followed by his totally unnecessary deployment of the Marine Corp has incited further civil unrest, which the president must be rubbing his hands with glee about, and using as justification for his authoritarian approach.
Trump’s call to arrest Newsom, and the ensuing rhetoric that the president is acting as a dictator, have been further unsettling.
The latest outrage is the treatment of California senator Alex Padilla, who was forcibly bundled out of a press conference being given by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem for attempting to ask a question. He was pushed to the ground and handcuffed, but not arrested.
Condemnation of such brutish tactics has been quick to land. Speaking afterwards, he said if this is the way the Trump administration responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they are doing to others.
Trump’s deplorable actions, his deluded thinking and self-aggrandisement puts him right up there with other authoritarian leaders. There can be no doubt now of his real intentions.
Americans are embarking on a fight for the future and the soul of their nation.
I wanna go home
The legacy of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, who died on Wednesday aged 82, is assured, with Sir Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and Sir Elton John among those calling him a genius. Other tributes have come from artists as diverse as Carole King, John Cale and Roger Daltrey.
Wilson was a tortured, troubled artist whose life was deeply affected by a violent and abusive father, by mental illness and drug addiction. The pressures of touring and being constantly creative drove him to several breakdowns.
Yet his drive for beauty in his art, and his massive musical intelligence, pushed his influence into the farthest corners of the music world.
The harmonies and melodies he heard in his head, the instrumentation and unique production needed to maximise their impact, changed the way popular music developed during the 1960s. Without the Pet Sounds album, The Beatles would likely never have embarked on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Wilson is the shimmering joy of Sloop John B, the complexity of Good Vibrations, the beauty and wistfulness of God Only Knows.
Call for the captain ashore.
