Some of us are old enough to remember the regular edgy inquiries 10 years ago as to why this paper was so damned preoccupied by the activities of one Donald Trump when we had plenty of our own problems to reckon with. That free-range anxiety currently hovering in the ether may help explain it.

In previous years images of President Joe Biden awarding the Medal of Freedom to people such as Liz Cheney, George Soros and Bono might have looked like another clatter of wealthy privileged folk slapping each others’ backs. Last week it felt more like Biden’s last desperate message to an apathetic world.

“You’re like a dying wasp you are,” said Dublin criminal Gerard Hutch to RTÉ’s Paul Reynolds in November when the journalist doggedly challenged him at the election count. It was the first and worst insult the crime boss could think of and all the more stinging because it contained a germ of truth. Criminal reputations, corruption and crass ignorance are now badges of pride. That didn’t begin with Trump – we’ve had plenty of our own examples in politics, banking, property and elsewhere – but Trump gave it a public swagger that spawned imitators like flies. His latest notions about annexing Canada, Mexico or Greenland like a pound shop Putin are just what the Maga faithful expect – but only because the notions come wrapped in the flashy power of his wealth. To everyone else they sound psychotic.

Wealth is not just a means of living in luxury but a way of changing perceptions of its........

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