Last week when the Taoiseach managed to exit the Oval Office with his dignity – and then some – it’s fair to say that many of us felt relieved, if a little dirty. Those images will never not be disturbing. But then, as if we needed to be reminded precisely whom he had been consorting with, a Trump post promptly blasted through what the 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke called “the decent drapery of life”.

“Good. I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”, wrote the five-time draft dodger of Robert Mueller, an honourable public servant and decorated war veteran, an old man dead from Parkinson’s, his wife and daughters still absorbing the terrible finality of his last breath. Trump’s celebratory post landed only minutes after the public announcement.

Though many of us cleave to the old guidance of not speaking ill of the dead (in public anyway, and with a decent time lapse), we know better than to expect decency from Trump, a man who has delighted in abusing the memories of people like John McCain, Colin Powell and Rob Reiner after their deaths.

In a normal world, that chilling absence of empathy will always stop people in their tracks and even remind us why manners matter. Burke believed that manners are more important than laws because the laws depend on them. “The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarise or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible........

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