When is the Trump nightmare going to end? When he steps down, or dies, I suppose. Has there ever been a more ridiculous head of any state, in the entire history of the world? Stupefyingly ignorant, as we all know by now, and fundamentally amoral; but beyond that totally self-obsessed, petty, and revengeful against anyone who has fallen out with him. Which is why other foreign leaders flatter his ego if they want anything from him, whilst laughing at him, as I imagine they must do, behind his back.

When he first burst upon the political scene I took him for a throwback to the venerable tradition of American isolationism: ‘America First’; which felt not such a bad thing to someone like me who had got fed up with the interventionist, imperial Power she had turned into after the last War. (See my Empire and Superempire, 2006.) No more interference in the affairs of other nations; no more wars and war-mongering; no aspiration to be the world’s policeman; no more sense of ‘shining city upon the hill’ superiority; – all marking the USA’s return to being just one nation among others – albeit a ‘great’ one – simply looking after herself. Her allies would need to make adjustments, especially after America’s military protection was taken away from them; but we could live with that, and perhaps with more dignity than we’d had before. If this was what Trump genuinely intended, and might achieve, then I for one – and despite all the man’s obvious awfulness – could go along with it.

But the longer he’s in power, and especially in this his second term, all that begins to seem less likely. For a start there’s his well-known volatility and unpredictability, meaning that he could change his mind and policies at a moment’s notice. Then there are his stated designs on Greenland, Canada, Panama and Gaza, which – although expressed in ‘national defensive’ terms – clearly have expansionist and imperialist implications. (As ‘defensive’ measures often have done, historically. A lot of Britain’s colonial territory-grabbing was defensive in its stated aims.) His much bruited ‘peace-making’ – worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, as he fondly imagines – may involve foreign intervention on a grand scale, and in any case looks more like capitulation to foreign force majeure. Obviously his ‘tariff war’ is a means of foreign interference, accompanied, as it often is, by non-commercial demands on the countries he’s making his ‘deals’ with. (Vance is perhaps more guilty of this than Trump. He of course could be Trump’s successor.) Then there’s the example of Trump’s ideologically-driven policies at home: his proto-Fascist executive orders, directly affecting only the US, of course, but powerfully encouraging right-wing movements around the world.

The word ‘ideologically’ there may be misleading. Trump is supposed to have no ideology; but he does have prejudices, and as a deeply unlettered man is clearly entrapped in the ideological implications of his upbringing. That upbringing, of course, was one of a real estate developer, inclining him to regard politics and government as a kind of game-board for territorial and financial ‘deals’: a super Monopoly game for the real world. More importantly, it exemplifies not only his own experience and prejudices, but also those of a large part of his country at the present moment in its political and social evolution; which is now starting to be called ‘late stage capitalism’. Or ‘last stage’, if you will.

Of course Trump has not achieved full Nazification yet, and it’s the responsibility of the Americans to stop him; but with the future prospect looming of large authoritarian countries on each side of us in Europe, and Europe itself not looking entirely impervious to Fascism’s charms, the future doesn’t look too bright.

(Apart from all that, I would go along with ‘Mickc’s first comment on my post of 14 May: https://bernardjporter.com/2025/05/14/what-if-he-succeeds/ – The third BTL contribution there).