I don’t suffer from what some of President Donald Trump’s more fervent supporters – both in the US and in Australia – like to call “Trump derangement syndrome”.

That is, I’m not disputing that he won last November’s US presidential election “fair and square”, as did the Republican Party in both the House and the Senate, and that together they have a mandate to implement the policies that they presented to the American people during the campaign that preceded those elections.

(Whether they have a mandate to implement policies they didn’t present to the people during the campaign, or indeed policies that Trump explicitly distanced himself from is another matter, but not one that I’m going to pursue here.)

Rather, in my view, the American people choosing – as they clearly did – a convicted felon, self-confessed sexual predator, racist, narcissist, protectionist, someone who openly displays his contempt for the US constitution, the “norms” and conventions of both personal behaviour and political conduct, to be their “Commander-in-Chief”, despite knowing all those things – as, arguably, many if not most didn’t in 2016 – tells the rest of the world something very profound about the American people. Something that Europeans – along with Canadians, Japanese, South Koreans, Taiwanese, Australians and New Zealanders need to understand, very quickly.

The American people of today are not the same people as those who saved the world from fascism 80 years ago, and who over the following 45 years stared down Soviet Communism.

They are not the same people as on whose behalf John F. Kennedy pledged 65 years ago, to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty”.

They are not the same people as on whose behalf Ronald Reagan, 40 years ago, celebrated the fact that “Americans courageously supported the struggle........

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