The White House race is ending in chaos and calamity

The US election wraps up in a few short days. Polling day is Tuesday, and then we face the unknown – everything from a Kamala blowout, to a Trump landslide, to something approaching full-scale civil war over a contested result is possible.

In any kind of normal campaign, in the final days, you try to pull together the competing narratives of the different candidates. What story was each of them trying to tell, what obstacles did each encounter, and what would a voter trying to follow the contest – or a non-American looking on anxiously – take home.

For this election, that’s impossible, not least for the reason that to follow the US presidential race in 2024 is to be bombarded with news that would normally seem ridiculous or outrageous, relentlessly, at such a rate that leaves you with no time to process any individual item before trying to grapple with the next.

Which ones matter? Which should matter? What might break through? What should affect how people vote? Try to answer any of that about the following – incomplete – list of stories that have happened merely since last Monday:

In the warm-up section of Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, a comedian called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” – prompting hasty backtracking when Republicans remembered that the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania has a population of 470,000 voters from Puerto Rico.

Amid the “floating island of garbage” row, the media largely ignored Trump advisor Stephen Miller saying “America is for Americans and Americans only”, a bizarre echoing of a phrase used at a 1939 pro-Nazi rally at the very same venue, which pledged to “restore America to the true Americans”.

Republicans, meanwhile, feigned outrage after a verbal gaffe by President Joe Biden appeared to suggest he called Trump supporters “garbage”, rather than refer to the garbage spoken by a Trump supporter.

All of this led Donald Trump to dress up as a garbage man, clamber awkwardly into a garbage truck festooned with his campaign logos on airport tarmac, and answer questions in a bizarre stunt that mostly highlighted the sheer neon orange of his latest fake tan regime.

The Supreme Court intervened to allow a last-minute voter roll purge in Virginia that Democrats say is stripping legitimate citizens of their right to vote just days before the election

Disgraced former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, who interviewed Trump on stage at his final Arizona rally on Thursday, revealed he had been “physically attacked” by a demon while in bed with his wife.

A Republican Party official was arrested for stealing ballots in a video stunt used to undermine electronic voting machines.

Multiple postal boxes containing ballots in Democratic-leaning areas were set on fire.

An election official in Georgia begged Trump-supporting Twitter owner Elon Musk personally to take down an ultra-viral hoax clip suggesting recent immigrants from Haiti were casting multiple votes for Kamala Harris using fake IDs supplied by Democrats.

Elementary schools across America announced they were closing for voting day because of security concerns over the safety of the children.

A political row has emerged over whether or not Trump suggested that former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney should be shot – partially because she and her father, former Republican vice-president (and liberal hate figure) Dick Cheney, endorsed Kamala Harris.

Musk failed to appear in court for a case challenging his scheme giving away $1 million a day to registered swing state voters who signed his petition (and put their details on his mailing list) supporting the first and second amendments.

Musk has been recorded saying that a Trump presidency would spell mass financial hardship for middle America, but it would be worth it.

Trump biographer Michael Wolff has released audio tape reportedly of Jeffrey Epstein giving his view on various Trump White House figures.

The polls and the election forecasts are all relentlessly similar: the election is a coin-toss.

Good luck making any sense of that, let alone turning it into a narrative or finding some meaning. The reality is that to follow American politics is to be so relentlessly overstimulated by the news bombardment that you settle into almost a fugue state, becoming numb to each new shock or horror.

No-one can be blamed for choosing not to follow along with the show, since it leaves you no more informed than just opting out. But it does mean that one way or another, no-one really knows what’s going to come next – everyone is just guessing. It’s hard to look at that list and think it’s going to be anything good, though, even if disaster is averted.

That’s the week before election day. Who knows what the week after will look like?