When Lauren Hough set off across America in 2023 in her self-refitted second-hand Dodge van, she had the twin goals of circling the US and not traumatising her dog, Woody Guthrie. As readers setting off across a deeply polarised nation in the company of a six-foot left-wing lesbian who is no fan of the ‘orange billionaire’ or the people who voted for him, we expect that her implicit aim is
