In which the pond sheds a tear for the bromancer in full melt-down mode ...

(Above: Mathias Stomer c. 1650 and Jan Lievens, first half 17th century).

Oh ye doubters, oh ye of little faith, as if the pond would desert the bromancer in his hour of need and remorse, and the ritual washing of the hands...

Yes, the bromancer was in full melt-down mode, and no passing dalliance with the Caterists could stop the pond from bonding with a reptile so wrapped up in his suffering and despair ...

Well no, not really, not in the pond's living memory, and in many ways, it's thanks to Fox News, Roger Ailes - adviser on groping and debating - the supine Christie, the truly weird Rudy, Rupert Murdoch, and the madness of the Republican party swinging as far to the fundamentalist Christian right as might be imagined, with the only way out for the likes of Mike Pence to dole out forgiveness for the sinner...

Anything but behave like a Christian or even perform a decent secularist ritual washing and cleansing of the hands...

Well you have to hand it to the bromancer. Just that line about the brutality in the debate, that was, apparently, in the truest sense, un-American is reward enough for reading on ...

The pond is a devotee of pure, undiluted, distilled, essence of gibberish, and "in the truest sense" is a phrase that qualifies in the truest sense ...whatever truth and sense that might be ...

One presumes that the assassination of Lincoln or Kennedy is un-American, though in reality, the good citizens of the United States have a marvellous history of offing each other with astonishing brutality and a plentiful supply of arms ...

As for binding up the nation, no one's managed that since the Civil War, so good luck to anyone that tries ... though it's clear enough that Donald Trump would be a bull in a china shop both domestically and internationally ...

A pond correspondent kindly forwarded this image from Texas ... featuring fine Asian produce ...and this one featuring T-shirts made in Bangladesh ...

Now there's a bargain waiting to happen ...

And so back to the bromancer for the last gobbet ...

It's only when someone with too much time on their hands at night sits down to watch Fox News that it's possible to understand what is being pumped into American households 24/7, and with people even more bizarrely, paying for the pleasure ...

But it's not just Fox, though it's a major criminal enterprise.

How the sight of Morning Joe and Donny Deutsch shouting at each other about an ancient Bill Clinton blow job passes as either entertainment or political analysis escapes the pond.

CNN also specialises in shout feasts, and when a shouting match is truly epic, these days about whether they're talking about pussies or pussies, or whether they should mention pussies in front of the children, as if the man from the gangs of New York hadn't given it currency for all to hear, the shouting is faithfully captured and recirculated to all corners of the glob.

You don't have to look far for the decline and fall of American civilisation, and while the Murdochians blame Twitter and the intertubes, these newfangled gadgets are only amplifiers and transmitters at the heart of a disease which truly took off in the United States when Roger Ailes showed chairman Rupert how to make megabucks out of political extremism, and encouraged Republicans to do the same.

And so comes the final product of their unnatural, unhealthy and uncivilised - and let it be said, unXian and deeply un-conservative - behaviour ....

And so now we have a presidential campaign where a marauding marauder reduces everything to sniffing and snorting verbal rubble with pie in the sky promises of change ... and talk of pussies and blow jobs rule the air waves ...

Is there a deeper explanation? Well the pond's American correspondent included another snap, and if you can sell the average American, or a a filthy rich delusional Hollywood star this kind of snake oil, you can sell them anything ...