Camp was in a good mood since the weather was perfect: warm days and cool nights, unlike the relentless heat wave in Europe and tourists were patronizing the book store and the beer was fresh and cold. He also had something on his mind. I could tell by the way he tousled his grey curls with the free hand while the  other held on to his pint.

“Here is what I can gleam from scanning the news this week” he said. “The Qatari gifted and gilded Airforce 1 lands in Ankara for the NATO summit and its orange skinned passenger is received like the second coming. All the oxygen is sucked out of the space and guests and onlookers sway and swoon, unsure of their role in this charade. Will they be asked to smile and nod or curtsey or just stand there with hands folded at their backs, choking back bile and clenching buttocks?”

 “As the world watches in disbelieve,” I said.

“I have to say that Trump outdid himself this week. First he inserted himself as chief referee into the FIFA Worldcup.  He made the call to his buddy Fifantino and got the US team’s Folarin Balagun’s red card rescinded. Everybody got mad about this outrageous interference, especially the Belgians who didn’t really know who this guy was until he was suddenly pushed to the front pages. Turns out he plies his trade in France and plays for Monaco.”

 “Isn’t he an American by birthright citizenship, the kind his benefactor wanted the supreme court to disallow.”

“Poor Balogun, not even he could stop the 4:1 trouncing of the Americans by the motivated Belgians. Reverse this! the Belgian soccer federation posted after the game.”

We both shook our heads and concentrated on our drinks for a beat.

“Last Wednesday a federal judge ordered the release of $ 5.8 million to E. Jean Carrol for Trump’s sex abuse and defamation conviction. This comes days after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Trump and despite his attempt to get the justices to reconsider. Everybody knows he did it.”

“Everybody also knows now that Trump and his family amassed a fortune somewhere between 3 and 4 billion dollars since his return to the White House, much of it from shady crypto ventures.”

“Yes, and still 36% of Americans approve of this president. What is wrong with these people and what do they want?” I asked, exasperated

“Well, I can tell you that the millions of fundamental religious zealots support him as well as the white supremacy sympathizers and racists and all those that profit from his warmongering and tariff wars,” Camp said.

“Did you read about Meta’s plans to build a 13 million dollar, 1.4 gigawatt data centre north of Edmonton? It will be built on 1750 acres of land, almost twice the size of Stanley Park in Vancouver. Meta claims that if will fully fund a new natural gas generation plant and infrastructure which will consume about the same as 800’000 homes. All this for cloud data storage and AI bots.”

“Remember that Stones song, Get off of my cloud? That should be the new theme song,” Camp said and just in time Vicky served up two mugs of cold, golden lager. Nothing artificial or intelligent about beer.