As coincidences would have it, I was up stupidly early this morning. I couldn’t sleep, so lying awake in bed at about four I opted to get up and check the news. I’d intended to get back into bed before long, but when I saw the headlines, that suddenly wasn’t an option. As much as we may despise Donald Trump, what happened in Pennsylvania last night was unacceptable. I personally find it ludicrous that the world’s richest, most advanced democracy would even contemplate electing (indeed re-electing) such a charlatan, but I don’t think he should be assassinated. Surely resorting to violence would make the already frighteningly heated political environment in America even worse. The guy’s a disgrace, but killing him would just reduce American political discourse to something totally uncivilised. I thus just wanted to record my horror at the utterly disturbing news coming to us this morning. Frankly it’s remarkable that Trump wasn’t killed, because then things would surely have been far, far worse.