The other American landscape.

We can’t escape it.

There is an election on in the USA?

Why have I not mentioned this more in this blog?

Well, it is a travel blog.

But yes, perhaps it is time to mention it since it colours the country and much of one’s experience.

Bruce is worried about my political outspokenness. He urges me to say nothing. So, I am being really discreet.

But I want to weep or scream much of the time.

Turn on the radio and there is Trump. He is the subject of adoration with the right wing hate radio jocks and the subject of agonisingly “unbiased” analysis on the thoughtful PBS network. There is a sense of trepidation in anyone who is not praising and justifying the Trump factor. I feel that people are afraid to speak out.

They know they will be subject to a steamrolling.

His campaign is revved up and he blankets the country’s media, despite the fact that his publicity machine is a Twitter feed and personal phone calls to Fox and jocks. It is, indeed, a steamroller phenomenon.

By comparison, there is rarely any coverage from the Clinton camp but a lot of invective from the Republican camp about the Clinton camp. The Republicans run with a system of repetition. Say something enough and it is believed. Hillary is a criminal. The FBI may not think so, but the American public is being convinced by an unrelenting barrage of bully rhetoric that she is.

And there they are on TV, baying for blood.

To an outsider, this is chilling. This is a very disturbing time.

The country has forgotten that Trump is a megalomaniacal reality TV star and he speaks without notes because he never says anything other than how great he is.

Driving through the American mid-west, I have seen no support for Hillary at all. Not a single garden poster. I’ve seen a few for Bernie Sanders. And I have seen quite a few more for Trump, including some big, clumsy home-made signs at the roadside.

I have not met any Democrats.

Or, if I have, they have not admitted it.

But, I was talking to a Philadelphia fellow the other day in Milwaukee and he said: “Don’t be fooled by the media. Most Americans are not that interested in politics.”

Poster