I'm officially infected by whatever virus is caused by Donald Trump. I am in the middle of editing a story that will appear in next week's paper, but I keep standing up, looking out the window, checking Twitter again, wondering if there's some way that the Trump stories today are wrong.

But they're not wrong. In fact, there are more new ones every second. Prominent English politicians want a "serious discussion" about banning Trump from Britain. John Cassidy wants TV networks to do something ("Is it in the public interest for a calculating demagogue like Trump to be granted such a large and powerful platform, on which to present his increasingly alarmist world view?") but he's not exactly sure what they should do. There was that story yesterday about Islamophobia spiraling out of control, and Trump's comments today were just kerosene on the fire.

When you've been condemned by Dick Cheney, well, that's really saying something. A few sentences later in that condemned-by-Dick-Cheney story:

Horrified Muslims in the United States heard in Trump’s rhetoric an echo of Nazism...

Which reminds me of something else I need to do, which is to write a review of The Sound of Music at 5th Avenue Theatre, which has a great cast, a fantastic act two, and a very striking flag with a swastika on it that rolls down into view at the end—it's like 20 feet high, this swastika, and there's no way to remember it now and not think of Trump, who just today shrugged off being compared to Hitler.

Earlier today on Slog, Matt Baume wrote: "It's gotta be a prank, right? He can't be serious... It must be performance art." But then you think about the way Nazis used propaganda and performance and art it's almost enough to make your heart stop. Make my heart stop. What if it's serious and it's performance art? What if it's working on enough people to matter?

Maybe I'm a fatalist, because I don't see how Trump doesn't become the nominee, because a billionaire reality TV star is many people's deepest desire—if they can't be one, they'll at least vote for one—and because the other candidates are just so shockingly bad. As the Guardian reports, the Republican party is in "chaos."