Even Lewis Carroll couldn’t have imagined someone as malignant and mad as Trump

The Trump story is a sort of malignant Alice in Wonderland. Nothing is but what is not. Donald Trump’s all too visible deficiencies should have prevented him being elected in 2016. But it was the year of the world’s two largest English-speaking nations taking leave of their senses in elections. I reflected at the time that at least Trump would only be in office for four years – we Brits wouid be stuck with the consequences of Brexit for a decade or more. I was right. At least so I thought.

Trump’s failed Presidency and its hideous coda on January 6th 2021 should have seen the end of this repulsive man. That it didn’t is attributable to three main factors. Firstly a movement grew in America, much larger than a cult, which totally irrationally, sanctified Trump and even saw him as the representation of their simplistic religious beliefs. Second the Republican Party adopted Trump despite the fact that his history, performance and behaviour had nothing in common with the party of Lincoln, Reagan and Bush. And third commentators actually made the case for Trump – a case based on the bizarre notion that the Conservative Right had no one better.

I would add that some people who should know better made the case for Trump because they personally benefited from his presidency, or thought they did. An American senior ex colleague of mine, a rich man, supported Trump because the stock market did well during his time in the White House. Self interest before decency and logic.

There is no precedent for the Trump phenomenon, certainly in modern times. Richard Nixon was a crook but a brilliant though deeply flawed one. Many of his successors had their moments of fallibility but in the main they all earned respect from opponents and the public alike. Now after his conviction nobody, even surely his most fanatical supporters, can respect Donald Trump.

It’s too easy to blame American culture and society. True a totally rational nation would have had checks and balances that would have prevented the “Donald” from being in any way near power. But there was a gut anti-establishment appeal in Trump that led many deprived and deluded electors to vote for him. The “It can’t get any worse” syndrome.

Well it did get worse and the very fact that despite everything people are today, post the New York verdicts, promoting Trump for President puts us firmly in Mad Hatter territory. Oh my fur and whiskers!