PARIS — Across Europe and beyond, old friends once smitten with America now view it with despairing contempt — an immigrant nation of warring "liberals" and "conservatives" that exceeds any théâtre de l'absurde playwright's imagination.

After a long look around in what was the United States, I found those catchall political labels so yesterday. Americans fall into two main categories: those who know about Shmoos and those who don't.

I'll get to them in a second. The top line here is that not nearly enough eligible voters realize the looming threat. If November elections go wrong, all the planned 250th anniversary hoopla will be for a country that no longer exists.

An unhinged madman backed by entrenched plutocrats could muzzle dissent, repress protesters with deadly force and paint "Fuck Off!" in big red letters on the Statue of Liberty that a once-admiring France gave to a different America.

Much of that is already happening fast.

Cartoonist Al Capp came up with Shmoos in 1948 — small, smiley blobs shaped like bowling pins that laid grade A eggs and gave milk. When anyone looked hungry, they happily expired to be fried like chicken or grilled like steak.

Their antics were so amusing that no one needed movies or other entertainment. But they bred quickly and consumed nothing, making them bad for business. Authorities hunted them into extinction.

Today, mutant Shmoos with human attributes vote uncritically for politicians in thrall of a malevolent Supreme Leader, who hammers away at whatever upbeat bald lies they want to hear. Others don't bother to vote at all.

Capp, a rapier-sharp political observer, explained why he came up with them:

"I was driving from New York City to my farm in New Hampshire. The top of my car was down, and on either side of me I could see the lush and lovely New England countryside... It was the good earth at its generous summertime best, offering gifts to all.

"And the thought that came to me was this: Here we have this great and good and generous thing—the Earth. It's eager to give us everything we need. All we have to do is just let it alone, just be happy with it."

I remembered Capp on Memorial Day, driving around from my Provence olive grove. The top of my old Peugeot was down. On either side I could see the lush and lovely French countryside. The good earth at its generous springtime best, offering gifts to all.

People are people. Borders are only lines on a map. We can still save what is left of a bounteous planet if we can just stop screwing it up.

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WILD OLIVES, France — Sorting through notes after six months in America, I happened upon this typical Trump tweet: “We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” The man is semi-literate and impervious to truth.

In at least 35 countries, including Canada and Mexico, anyone born within their borders is a citizen. The United States alone was "STUPID" enough to give a corrupt, delusional, racist megalomaniac a second term to devastate so much of our imperiled planet.

As expected, Europeans pepper me with questions about America's wannabe god-king who so many laughed off at first but now view with seething contempt.

The problem, I think, is less stupidity than cupidity. A wealthy few manage to convince workaday families that soaring bills and hardships are not the president's fault. Too many Americans simply ignore real-world crises their leaders make steadily worse.

And although Trump's poll numbers plummet, he still has an ace in the hole, which he exploits with shameless blood libel: baseless fear of the off-white Other.

Rich countries need border controls as desperate families flee climate collapse and conflict. But America, with its wide-open spaces, depends heavily on fresh skills and scutwork labor. Slammed doors only shorten the fuse on a global human timebomb.

Ineffable poverty and simmering hatreds grow exponentially as Trump's fossil-fuel backers poison Earth's atmosphere. The millions he lets die because of slashed foreign aid leave behind survivors who swell the ranks of terrorist groups and criminal gangs.

Balloting in November will reveal whether enough Americans are ready to protect their own progeny from unbearable heat, rising polluted seas and freak violent storms as well as unstoppable military conflict and increasing demagogy.

It will be the most crucial election ever, anywhere, in a wider world badly in need of American wherewithal to confront common challenges. In a dis-United States, it will amount to a national referendumb.

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TUCSON — With his signature grace, Donald Trump deigned to reign over the upcoming White House Correspondents Association dinner for the first time since Barack Obama and stand-up comedian hosts roasted him like a plucked turkey.

"...Because the Press was extraordinarily bad to me, FAKE NEWS ALL, right from the beginning of my First Term, I boycotted the event, and never went as Honoree," he wrote in March on his personal truth-free, anti-social feed.

And the first part of his long post reflected a monarch so thin-skinned that he yells "Off with their heads!" at court jesters, like that mad queen down Alice's rabbit hole:

"The fact that these "Correspondents" now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T, according to many, it will be my Honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER OF ANY KIND, EVER!"

G.O.A.T, as you likely know, means Greatest of All Time. Hardly, considering Lincoln and Washington, or Franklin Roosevelt and other oath-keeping presidents at the annual event since 1926. But what a bullshit pulpit for a self-enamored fool who loves to gloat.

For Trump, it will be sweet revenge. In 2011, he sat stone-faced as Obama and a young Seth Meyers lobbed stinging one-liners at him to howls of laughter. That appears to be when he decided to toss a red cap into the ring.

On a big screen, Obama showed a mockup of what a Trump-themed White House would look like, uncannily evocative of what is planned today.

Rather than a traditional comedian to exchange jibes with a sitting president, the dinner's host is a mentalist, Oz Pearlman. Logical, Jimmy Kimmel quipped. Trump is a mental case.

The three-day extravaganza begins Friday with lavish sideshow events, the black-tie gala evening and afterparties, some hosted by faux-journalists, lobbyists, big business and foreign governments.

During Ronald Reagan's time, Mark Hertsgaard's classic book, "On Bended Knee," details how so many major news organizations were "subservient to state authority."

These days, the best reporters are better than ever, with new tools and technology. But the worst of them descend lower than their knees. The old Spanish term, chupamedias, describes them. Literally, sock-suckers.

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TUCSON — We know about tacos here in Baja Arizona, and Donald Trump is no TACO. True, he always chickens out and has a high grease content. But I've never heard of a folded filled tortilla capable of destroying a planet by sheer hubris and insanity.

In America's name, he threatened to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, imperiling 92 million people of different ethnicities along with diplomats, foreign technicians, visitors and Iranian Americans who return regularly to see families.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he posted on "Truth Social," his own anti-social stream of lies through which he addresses the nation and the wider world. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” It didn't.

Trump declared a two-week cease fire, already tenuous. So far, his $2 billion a day war has achieved little beyond civilian misery and destroyed cultural treasures from an ancient world that belong to our progeny, if any survive his jihad against climate action.

But his threat alone is against Geneva Conventions drafted mostly in Washington after World War II. "Genocide" does not begin to cover what that would mean. Airstrikes have already killed thousands of civilians, including hundreds of school kids.

His indifferent approach to wanton slaughter, combined with everything else we have seen since 2017, defines the man who personifies a dis-United States.

This is brief(ish) Report with a plan for suggested action below. There is not a day to lose. This is no time for despair, confusion or apathy. Trump needs to go now. And, later, so does J.D. Vance, a chameleon manipulated by billionaires and ideologues.

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