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Donald Trump keeps invoking the ‘manifest destiny’ of America to rule the Western Hemisphere, thereby using a stock phrase in the lexicon of American exceptionalism.

For Trump, manifest destiny means that America answers only to an authority infinitely higher than silly international laws or impotent defence alliances. This makes the US a simulacrum of old kingdoms whose absolute monarchs ruled by divine right.

Such monarchs always said they were accountable to God only, meaning, in earthly terms, to no one. In a clear echo of such sentiments, Trump said the other day that he recognises no constraints other than his own morality. That was something Louis XIV or Nicholas I could have claimed, except that they probably would also have mentioned God in that context.

The tendency to express the nature of the US in quasi-religious terms didn’t start with Trump. It goes back to that Mayflower passenger, John Winthrop, who borrowed a phrase from St Matthew to describe America as a divinely ordained “city on a hill”.

The Biblical phrase immediately entered American lore and there it remains to this day. The underlying spirit cuts across party lines: the phrase was used by both the arch-Democrat John Kennedy and the arch-Republican Ronald Reagan. In other words, America isn’t just different from all other countries; it is saintlier and therefore better.

While other lands amble aimlessly through life, it’s America’s right and duty to carry out a messianic mission by spreading the ideals of liberalism, democracy, democratic liberalism, liberal democracy, republicanism or any other voguish political term denoting the underlying virtue.

In 1809 Jefferson expressed the principle of America as a beacon without relying on biblical references: “Trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government, from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth, if other regions of the earth shall ever become susceptible of its benign influence.”

Tastes differ but facts shouldn’t: America was not “the only monument… and the sole depository… of freedom and self-government”. England, among others, had form in those areas too. But then the puffery of political pietism knows no bounds.

In due course the ‘city on a hill’ was helped along by other similar claims. In the 1840s the journalist John L. O’Sullivan coined the term ‘manifest destiny’ so beloved of Trump. Said manifest destiny was according to him “divine”: it was incumbent upon America “to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man”.

That God-like mission entailed the worldwide enforcement of the inalienable rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Already at that early date the impression was conveyed, for the time being obliquely, that America’s founding documents were binding not just for herself but also for the unsuspecting outside world. If all those countries didn’t realise what was good for them, it was up to America to teach them – and chastise them if they played truant.

Never in the history of the world, at least not since the heyday of Rome, had there existed another nation so bursting with such refreshingly sanctimonious arrogance. The world had to wait until the twentieth century for the American antithetical doppelgänger to appear: Soviet Russia on her own messianic crusade. The differences between the two are obvious enough, but the similarities are just as telling, if less commented upon.

The two messianic countries tucked away at the periphery of Christendom had both a positive and a negative constituent to their aspirations. While their positive aspirations differed, their negative desiderata were identical: the repudiation of the old order, otherwise known as European civilisation.

(“Repudiation of Europe,” Ezra Pound once said, “is the raison d’être of America.”)

America was more successful in achieving her positive aim of the ‘pursuit of happiness’ (it was more achievable to begin with, for being more pragmatic), understandably so. A seducer, after all, is likely to run up a higher amatory score than a rapist. It remains to be seen which of the two will repudiate Europe more decisively — it’s a close race at the moment.

To reinforce the quasi-religious aspects of their self-worship, both countries borrowed their iconography from various creeds, either pagan or faux Christian.

In ghoulish mimicry of Christian relics, for example, the ‘uncorrupted’ body of Lenin still lies in its mausoleum, minus the erstwhile mile-long queues of worshippers. Rumours used to be spread that Soviet scientists were working on ways to bring Lenin’s body back to life, and every Soviet city, town or village was adorned with posters screaming “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will always live!”. The mass murderer was a simulacrum of Jesus Christ.

Many have commented on the perverse references to religion in Bolshevik iconography, but few have noticed that the same mimicry is also robust in America.

Hardly any speech by American leaders from the eighteenth century onwards has omitted quasi-religious references to canonised historical figures, whose deeds are routinely described in Biblical terms. “Fellow citizens, the ark of your covenant is the Declaration of Independence,” pronounced John Quincy Adams, and he meant it exactly as it sounded.

Sacral visual imagery also abounds, as do mock-religious shrines to past leaders. Mount Rushmore with its 60-foot likenesses of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln carved in granite is an obligatory site for American pilgrimages.

George Washington in particular is worshipped in a religious manner as ‘Great Father of the Country’. The interior of the Capitol dome in DC displays a fresco entitled The Apotheosis of Washington where the sainted Father is surrounded by Baroque angels and also representations of other Founders in contact with various pagan gods, such as Neptune, Vulcan and Minerva.

In the same vein, the Lincoln Memorial is designed as a Greek temple and is actually identified as such in marble: “In this temple, as in the hearts of the people, for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”

The Jefferson Memorial, not far away, is also a replica of a pagan shrine, with various quasi-religious references inscribed. Cited, for example, is a quotation from Jefferson’s letter to Washington preaching that: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? … Commerce between master and slave is despotism.”

It is useful to remember that these ringing words were uttered by a man who had his chattel slaves flogged to mincemeat for trying to escape. Jefferson also openly despised every Christian dogma and sacrament. His statement would therefore be either hypocritical or downright cynical if we were to forget that by then ‘God’ had become the shorthand for ‘America’.

To emulate the God of the Scriptures, the American deity has to claim creative powers. God Mark I may or may not have created the world, but it’s definitely up to God Mark II to recreate it.

One of America’s spiritual fathers, Thomas Paine, said as much. In his revolutionary gospel Common Sense Paine thundered off his pulpit that: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand…”.

Thus from the beginning American patriotism took on certain characteristics that until then had been more commonly associated with love of God, not of one’s country. And new patriotism began to claim precedence over old morality.

This isn’t to say that no true religious spirit existed in America – it did, and at the time it was still virile. But that residual piety had no role to play in the day-to-day running of the new republic.

For American politicians the Bible wasn’t so much a guide to their activities as an inexhaustible source of spiffy phrases, a precursor to the Roget’s Thesaurus of Quotations. Real life was driven by the unreal religion, one based not on a God worshipped but on a country deified.

That’s why many observers on this side of the Atlantic are wrong when believing that Trump is sui generis. In fact, he drinks from the founding and historical sources of the American psyche, appealing powerfully to those in whom those sources continue to gush.

Unlike traditional, organically developed European countries, America was built on an ideology, and any ideology is a secular faith. That’s why the US appears as enigmatic to an average Englishman or Spaniard as Russia seemed to Winston Churchill.

Such people don’t realise that an American is defined not only by culture, language and national allegiance, but also by a form of neo-pagan piety, a secular cult that’s a simulacrum of Christian messianism. Some Americans are passionately devout exponents of this totemistic cult, some less so.

Trump genuflects before that totem pole with what may or may not be genuine devotion. One way or the other, he knows how to speak to true believers in their own language, and that’s what makes him an electoral success.

Yet it also makes him unacceptable to those who kneel at different altars, both literal and figurative. Europeans are happy to welcome America as an ally, even sometimes as a role model. But they’ll always resent and resist a hectoring, bullying America, as personified by Trump. This sort of thing doesn’t travel well.

… has so much been paid by so many to gratify so few. My having to paraphrase Churchill’s famous saying should alert you to my problem.

My own words simply failed me when I tried to react to the data just published by the National Energy System Operator (NESO). If you are unfamiliar with this outfit, don’t rush to indict it for anti-Labour bias.

In fact, NESO is a government quango responsible for our energy systems. As such, it’s more likely to err on the side of its paymaster, which is to say the government or, more generally, Labour or, more narrowly, Keir Starmer or, more specifically, Ed Miliband.

This lengthy introduction is necessary to prime your credulity because I’m about to unveil a truly incredible datum. Are you ready? Good. Now brace yourself:

Labour’s, more specifically Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s, insanely criminal drive towards net zero will cost us £4.5 trillion over the next 25 years. That’s £4.5 followed by 12 zeroes in case you’re wondering.

In a sane world, that forecast, exceeding Britain’s entire GDP, would be sufficient to mitigate the government’s commitment even to a sound policy. But our world is anything but sane, which is why a gang of obtuse Marxist apparatchiks are allowed to beggar the country in the name of an ideological construct lacking any valid scientific evidence.

Yet even assuming that the theory of global warming is correct, and ‘our planet’ is on course to be incinerated by carbon dioxide, Britain’s suicide by net zero is completely meaningless. The country produces merely one per cent of the world’s output of that dastardly gas. So even if we hit the madcap net zero target, it won’t increase ‘our planet’s’ chances of survival one bit.

Those who cross the sea may change their sky, according to Horace, but not their soul (caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt) and, more to the point, certainly not their atmosphere. This they have to share with countries like China, India and Russia that are many unsavoury things, but woke isn’t one of them.

That staggering £4.5 trillion sum covers carpeting the country with new wind farms and their pylons, building a network of charging stations for electric cars, upgrading roads warped by those heavy vehicles, installing millions of solar panels, switching from boilers to heat pumps, beefing up the grid to enable it to accommodate millions of electric appliances pretending to be cars – and God only knows how many other items I’ve left out.

The current projection far exceeds all previous forecasts, which is par for the course of government estimates. Hence it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that the £4.5 trillion – although ample to bankrupt the country – has more to do with hope than expectation. We ought to double it to be on the safe side, although ‘safe’ seems to be a misnomer.

Thus, Britain is going to spend £182 billion a year or more to ruin the country and only £61.7 a year to defend it. But things like defence, secure borders and fiscal responsibility are the domain of conservatives, aka reactionaries, aka racists, aka colonialists, aka transphobes, aka fascists.

Marxists, aka progressives, don’t mind stripping the country’s defences bare, flinging her door wide open to welcome swarms of Third World migrants hostile to the West – and they certainly don’t mind reducing the country to Third World penury.

The net zero drive will push our state debt from its current stratospheric level to a galactic one, which any normal person would anticipate with trepidation. But one function of exorbitant sovereign debt is a transfer of power from the people to the state, meaning to the Milibandits of this world.

A disaster to you and me is a boon to that Marxist lot. What I find astounding is that such nonentities as febrile of ideology as they are feeble of mind can take part in Western politics, never mind gaining electoral success.

There had to be millions of Britons voting for this hybrid of communist cell and lunatic asylum – but then one is born every minute, as T E Barnum once said about suckers. But don’t get me started on one-man-one-vote democracy of universal franchise.

Labour won their 2024 landslide with about one-third of the popular vote. This they deem sufficient to regard the election as a mandate to do as they please. And, until 2029, no constitutional mechanisms exist for the people to prevent this electoral Marxist takeover from ruining and, as a result, enslaving the country.

Moreover, the Tories are happy to score rhetorical points off the government. But during their 14 years in power they had plenty of chances to nip this subversive nonsense in the bud – and failed to take any of them. Moreover, their commitment to net zero was only a couple of degrees cooler than Labour’s.

For example, as (Tory!) Prime Minister, Boris Johnson set a legally binding target for the UK to reach net zero by 2050. After reverting to his pre-political journalistic trade, he acknowledged he had gone “far too fast”, and that his policy was “too expensive for ordinary people”. You don’t say.

Talk, however, is cheap. It’s action that matters, and I don’t hold much hope that, in the unlikely event the Tories win the next general election, they’ll abandon this criminal policy. At best, they’ll add a few years to the target without ever repudiating it altogether.

Nigel Farage is making encouraging noises, but he still isn’t within striking distance of 10 Downing Street. I’m willing to bet that, as the key to that house moves within reach, he too will start to waffle about the drive being too fast, though generally virtuous.

I hope Reform will prove me wrong, but so far they haven’t denounced the whole business as an ideological construct erected on the foundation of no proper evidence. One thing I can say for Trump is that he doesn’t mind calling global warming a “hoax”. Neither does he hesitate to pull the US out of all international eco-setups, that ideal sinecure for Marxist apparatchiks, those Frankfurters who fell out of Marx’s buns.

But, barring the possibility of Trump deciding that America “needs to own” not only Greenland but also Britain for security reasons, we are stuck with the Milibandits on the eco-prowl.

So start drilling new holes in your belts, chaps. Our governing cabal is out to beggar the country, and there’s precious little we can do about it.

Martin, I’ll have you know, is one of our best football writers, possibly even the best.

Reaching such a distinction seems to be enough for most lifetimes, but not for Martin’s. A few years ago he moved from The Mail to The Times, partly because his brief was expanded to include the odd feature on other subjects as well.

This violated the commandment tersely enunciated by Clint Eastwood in one of his films: “A man must be aware of his limitations.” Unfortunately, this commandment is obeyed no more faithfully than the better-known ten.

People, especially creative ones, always want more. David Hume, for example, was by all accounts a great historian (I haven’t yet got around to reading his History of England, but I promise I will). Yet he wanted to graduate to philosophy, which really wasn’t his forte.

A century later, Tolstoy, in my view the best novelist in history, decided to become a philosopher, theologian and a teacher of mankind. The result was some 50 volumes of unpleasant rubbish with nary a sound thought on any subject. (I shouldn’t knock old Leo because his ineptitude provided the inspiration and material for my book God and Man According to Tolstoy.)

To use a much less lofty example, I once wrote a novel but never tried to send it out to publishers. It was good enough to print, I suppose, but my guiding principle in such matters is that good enough isn’t good enough.

I realised that, in accordance with the Peter principle, I had reached the level of my incompetence, which, alas, is the only thing I have in common with Messrs Hume and Tolstoy. And also, I’m tempted to add, with a number of successful instrumentalists who insist on becoming conductors (orchestra, not train). Some of them manage to become successful there as well, but I can’t think offhand of any becoming good – I mean Furtwängler or at least Svetlanov kind of good.

Martin Samuel should have stuck to writing his masterly football columns, staying within his natural habitat. Instead, he has gate-crashed an area that requires more thought and general erudition than does the saga of wingbacks and holding midfielders. Unfortunately, Martin lacks such qualifications, but he does satisfy his paper’s relatively new requirement of being on the ‘liberal’ side of things.

This he proved by his article today, ICE Violence is Chilling – It Feels Scary to Visit the US. Martin will have to spend 45 days in the US this summer, I’m guessing to cover the World Cup. And, after the Minneapolis shooting, he fears for his life.

“What befell Renee Nicole Good should make even the most law-abiding citizen uncomfortable”, he writes. “Now you could take a wrong turn and get caught up in an ICE patrol” – and then bang-bang, no more Martin.

The danger of being shot during an American junket has always existed, he explains. But at least in the past the attackers used to be criminals, not trigger-happy ICE officers.

I don’t share Martin’s assessment of the situation, but even when fear is unfounded, it can wreak havoc on people’s behaviour. This can turn into a panic, and then even “the most law-abiding citizen” may put himself in harm’s way by doing something rash.

My fear is that, should Martin panic and get shot by those dastardly ICE or other law-enforcement officers, I’ll no longer be able to enjoy his football articles. Therefore, I feel it behoves me as a former 15-year US resident to offer Martin some avuncular advice on how to avoid a police bullet.

When I lived in Texas, one of the gunniest states in the Union, I had many brushes with police, typically over driving too fast or not sober enough. In those days, cops still had a sense of humour, which once enabled me to get out of a ticket. When the officer asked me where the fire was, I replied, “In your eyes, you gypsy savage you.” He laughed and let me get off with a warning.

But even so, I always followed the same procedure well familiar to every American. When a cop stops you for any reason, you do exactly what he says.

Before he says anything, you put both hands on the top of the wheel and await instructions. If he tells you to take out your licence and registration, that’s what you do. If he tells you to get out of the car, you do so. If he doesn’t tell you to do that, you stay put.

You see, being a police officer in the US is a more dangerous occupation than in Martin’s native land. Cops there carry guns, as do many criminals and “the most law-abiding citizens”. (I’m not going to discuss the Second Amendment here, other than saying it’s on the books as part of the US Constitution.)

A policeman’s trigger finger itches when he approaches a car. Too many of his colleagues have asked for licence and registration, but got a bullet instead. Or else they’ve been run over by a reticent driver who wished to keep his identity to himself.

This fate befell Jon Ross, the ICE officer who shot Good, a couple of months ago. He stopped a car driven by an illegal immigrant suspected of sex crimes (I’m guessing it wasn’t just complimenting a woman’s body). The chap refused to come out and, when Ross tried to grab him through the window, accelerated, dragging the officer 50 feet and injuring him gruesomely.

This time around, he was more alert, and, when Good accelerated towards him, did what any American policeman would do under the circumstances. This provides a useful object lesson to Martin: if you’re stopped by a cop, do what I used to do, don’t do what Good did, and you’ll be fine.

Another lesson for Martin to heed is not to do something else Good did: become an activist in a group actively trying to sabotage ICE going about its lawful business. Good and her accomplices used phone apps, whistles and car horns to alert illegal residents of a neighbourhood whenever ICE was on the prowl. In another exercise of illegal activities, they also tried to block ICE vehicles.

The World Cup schedule being as dense as it is, I doubt Martin will have the time to follow his heart and start parking his Avis across the streets where ICE officers are trying to round up illegals. However, just in case a gap is opening up, Martin, don’t do what Good did.

Also, if at all possible, try not to write about things you don’t really know and understand. It’s not enough to be ‘liberal’; you must also be able to think. Having said all that, I look forward to your explanations of why England lost in the quarters.

P.S. According to the papers Good and her wife “have a six-year-old child together.” Who was Mummy and who was Daddy? The public has the right to know.

The other day, an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officer shot and killed a 37-year-old woman who disobeyed his order to get out of her car and instead tried to run the officer over.

That happened in Minneapolis, one of the most liberal cities in the US and the capital city of one of the most liberal states. As the 2020 shooting of George Floyd in the same streets showed, such an incident is bound to touch a match to the tinderbox of liberal resentment, leading to mass rioting.

Now, ‘liberal’ started life as a cognate of ‘liberty’, but it has since betrayed its origin. I’m one of those dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries who usually use this word pejoratively in any context – and always in the American sense of the word.

In common with most entries in the Left-wing lexicon, the word stands for something not just different from its dictionary definition but indeed opposite to it. Not to cut too fine a point, ‘liberal’ means socialist, which is about as illiberal as it’s possible to get.

Out of either wickedness or, more typically, stupidity, socialists strive to destroy all traditional institutions acting as pillars on which our civilisation rests. When stripped of their bien pensant jargon, they want to replace everything private with everything public, creating an omnipotent state lording it over the grateful populace. (They assume, wrongly, that they’ll be in charge. They are more likely to end up dead or in prison.)

The greatest obstacle blocking the path to that ‘liberal’ El Dorado is the rule of just law, constitutional exercise of authority to protect citizens from depredations. And laws must be enforced because, if they aren’t, they become worse than useless – they themselves turn into weapons aimed at the heart of society.

Illegal immigration is lawbreaking, as the adjective suggests. And, when any law is routinely broken with impunity, people lose respect for all laws, the legislative bodies passing them and any setups trying to enforce them. History shows that lurking at the end is anarchy first and tyranny second.

European countries (including Britain) don’t seem to comprehend such basic truths, which is why they are overrun with swarms of illegals from alien cultures.

In addition to undermining the rule of law, this jeopardises the host countries’ finances, social tranquillity and traditional culture. As a side effect, variously nasty parties make political capital out of popular resentment at seeing hitherto peaceful communities turn into crime-infested hellholes.

All European leaders make half-hearted promises to curb illegal immigration, but, getting back to the original point, they tend to be ‘liberal’. Hence they themselves harbour seething resentment against the very institutions they’ve sworn to uphold. Acting decisively against illegal arrivals is in their circle seen as harking back to their countries’ colonial, racist past.

Now, say what you will about Trump, and God knows I’ve said enough, a liberal he isn’t. Hence he is prepared to use the entirety of his executive power to shut US borders to illegal crossings. And he has largely succeeded in doing so, making the US the only Western country (with the possible exception of Australia) that has lanced this festering boil.

Moreover, Trump seems dead-set not only on keeping illegals out of the country but also on deporting those already in. Predictably, all such efforts run into the stone wall of local resistance in cities and states run by ‘liberals’. And few are as ‘liberal’ as Minneapolis and Minnesota.

When the Donald sees a stone wall, he wastes no time on looking for a roundabout route. Instead, he busts right through. In this context, seeing no cooperation from state and city authorities, on 6 January the president launched the “largest immigration operation ever”, and you know how much Trump loves his superlatives.

He sent 2,000 ICE officers to Minnesota to launch a sweeping crackdown – not only on illegal immigrants as such but also specifically on the $9-billion fraud uncovered in the Somali community. (In my days, Minneapolis had a thriving advertising industry, but no Somali community. It now has the latter. Does it still have the former?)

The local liberals did what liberals usually do: try to impede any attempt to exercise lawful authority against groups essential to liberal sloganeering. In Minneapolis too, rioters came out in force, trying to block officers’ vehicles.

One of the rioters was Renee Nicole Good, a Colorado woman who, according to her post on social media, “was experiencing Minneapolis”. Is experiencing different from visiting? Apparently it is: visiting is a passive taking in of local highlights; ‘experiencing’ is diving headlong into local life, in this case an attempt to stop immigration officers in their tracks.

Several of those officers approached Good’s car, and one of them told her to get out. Instead, she put her foot down and accelerated at the officer, who managed to fire three shots before getting injured. He is now recovering in hospital, whereas Good died.

Yesterday her mother delivered the de rigueur litany describing her late daughter in almost the exact words used in 2020 to describe George Floyd, a recidivist criminal shot just a few streets away.

No one shot by police officers is ever a nasty bit of work. They are all secular saints.

Thus, according to her mother, Good was “an amazing human being… extremely compassionate… loving, forgiving and affectionate”. She “lived with her wife” and just happened to find herself in a wrong place at a wrong time. (I had to re-read that passage to make sure Good had a wife, not a husband.)

Such panegyrics have to co-exist dialectically with expressions of wrath, and city mayor Jacob Frey duly obliged: “ICE get the f**k out of Minneapolis!” He then added that the government’s version of the event “is bullsh*it”. And there I was, thinking that liberals were so much more refined than reactionaries.

Tim Walz, Minnesota governor, rejected the government’s claim that Good was doing something illegal. “Don’t believe this propaganda machine,” he said. Believe liberal propaganda instead, was the unspoken refrain.

During his first term as governor, Walz, later Kamala Harris’s running mate, inspired the riots following the death of St George Floyd. During his second term, he signed a whole raft of ‘liberal’ legislation, from abortion rights to driving licences for illegal immigrants.

I don’t quite get this: giving driving licences to illegal immigrants means the authorities know who those lawbreakers are and where they live. And yet they enable them to drive rather than kicking them out of the country. One can’t help noticing a certain laxity in enforcing the law, something that Trump tried to correct.

Incidentally, Walz decided not to stand for a third term after extensive fraud in social services had been revealed. Might that fraud have included the Somali community?

Anyway, any attempt to enforce immigration law is bound to elicit an outburst of indignation from Walz and his ilk. While still in office, will he encourage another spate of arson and looting? Wouldn’t put it past him.

Predictably, Trump’s reaction was rather different: “We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!”

Much as I deplore the orthography, the sentiment is unimpeachable. Hear, hear.

Some international developments are easy to foresee. Others, though not exactly foreseen, elicit no “Well, I never” surprise, once they’ve happened.

For me, NATO’s response to Iraq’s 1990 occupation of Kuwait is an example of the first category; Russia’s full-scale invasion of the Ukraine, of the second.

In the first instance, I knew beforehand that the US, and NATO in general, simply couldn’t let Saddam get away with that landgrab. Iraq threatened to turn the whole Middle East into a battlefield, endangering the West’s allies in the region and sending the global economy into a tailspin.

With Russia, I sat on the fence until Putin’s troops swept across the border on 24 February, 2022. Though Russia had been waging de facto war against the Ukraine since 2014, I wasn’t sure Putin would dare escalate to wholesale carnage.

Hence, when asked “Will he or won’t he?” I’d reply noncommittally. It’s possible he will and possible he won’t. However, when the invasion did occur, it didn’t catch me off guard. This was the ‘yes’ part of the binary scenario and, while I hadn’t thought it certain, I hadn’t thought it impossible either.

Yet there exists another category: events unforeseen before they happen and unbelievable once they’ve done so. Thus, just a couple of years ago, neither I nor – forgive me for presuming – you could have thought a day would come when a US president threatened a long-standing NATO ally with an invasion, with NATO promising to fight back.

Now it has happened, I still have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not having a bad dream.

Yesterday the White House reiterated what Trump had said several times before. The US has an urgent strategic need to control Greenland, and it plans to satisfy that need by hook or by crook.

“Utilising the US military is always an option,” clarified Trump’s comely press secretary, adding that his determination to control Greenland is “not going away”. Just give the Donald a couple of months to sort Venezuela out and then Greenland’s turn may come.

The governments of the key NATO members, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark, replied they’d “not stop defending” the Danish island. Wait a second, let me pinch myself again. No, this is actually happening: the US and European NATO members are threatening to go to war.

Forget alliances, civilisational kinship, history – forget everything you thought was chiselled in stone. Turns out it was merely so many lines drawn in the sand at low tide. A mighty wave then washed over the beach, erasing the lines, burying them under water.

Let’s not fall into the trap of Trump-bashing, by suggesting, for example, he does such things for the same reason a dog licks his testicles: because he can. Instead let’s try to look at the situation dispassionately.

Does the US really have a strategic need for Greenland, an Arctic island three times the size of Texas? The answer is yes.

Sitting just to the northeast of Canada, the island could form either the stronghold of America’s northern defences or the beachhead for an assault on her. Two evil regimes, China and Russia, are swarming around the island on which they clearly have designs.

The Arctic has indeed become an increasingly important arena for great-power tug-of-war. And Greenland is the key that can open the door to Arctic domination. Witness the fact that the US occupied the island during the Second World War, and no one except the Axis powers denied either the validity or the legality of the action.

However, Denmark was then occupied by Nazi Germany, and all bets are off during a world war. Legal and even moral niceties fall by the wayside: it’s us against them, and anything we do to make sure it’s us and not them is justified.

Peacetime, however, is different. The overall goal of protecting a country and its allies remains the same, but the means used to achieve that goal have to change.

Using or even threatening military force has to be leavened with caution, and long-term consequences must be weighed in the balance. Alas, such forward planning doesn’t strike me as Trump’s core strength.

Accepting with no reservations his belief that America has a vital strategic interest in Greenland, one is still tempted to ask whether or not the same applies, say, to the UK and Scandinavia. It probably does. Yet so far the White House hasn’t mentioned the possibility of occupying Britain or Sweden by force.

What has indeed happened in Britain shows how allies can help one another strategically. In recent days, the US has been busily reinforcing its Air Force bases in Britain.

A fleet of ten C-17 Globemasters, one of the world’s largest transport planes, and AC-130Js, potent ground attack aircraft, have landed at two RAF bases. The aim seems to be to support further US operations, and one can only hope they won’t be directed against NATO.

The US and Denmark have had a military agreement since 1951, in addition to both being NATO members. That’s why the US was able to build and operate its Pituffik Space Base in Greenland. The Danish and US flags fly over the base to emphasise that, though Pituffik belongs to the latter, the land underneath is Denmark’s territory.

I’m sure friendly diplomacy between the two countries could lead to expanding that 1951 agreement and adding other bases needed to protect both the US and NATO. That’s how allies respond to their shared strategic interests.

Yet Trump is a man in a hurry. His normal response to any problem is whipping his Occam’s razor out, even at the risk of cutting his own throat with it. Daniel Finkelstein has written a thoughtful article on this in today’s Times, comparing the US president, not unfavourably, to our own shilly-shallying government hung up on process rather than progress.

Trump, he wrote, is a man of action, whereas our lot just blow casuistic hot air and achieve nothing. This is doubtless true, but one could argue that most of history’s devastating conflicts have been caused by doers acting to the philosophy of ‘full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes’.

Let’s consider the torpedoes, aka consequences, of Trump’s threats. Even assuming that this is just rhetoric, and he really has no intention of sending US marines to take over Greenland, the situation is fraught with deadly danger.

People whose thinking on such matters isn’t sufficiently nuanced insist we should ignore Trump’s words and concentrate on his deeds. They don’t seem to realise that, coming from the leader of a great power, words are deeds.

It was mostly for words and not deeds that, for example, the First World War started. It was Napoleon’s words about Alexander I’s complicity in his father’s murder that made the 1812 war inevitable. It was the 1,320 words that American insurgents put down on paper that led to the War of Independence.

Nowadays, when words are no longer deeds and, increasingly, not even words recognisable as such, statements by world leaders still matter. The way world leaders frame their statements, their manner of speaking, even their grammar and facial expressions send messages both semantic and semiotic.

Trump has made no secret of how little time he has for NATO, and many of his gripes about it are fair. It’s true that the European members of the alliance haven’t been pulling their fiscal weight, over-relying on the US instead. It’s also true, as Lord Finkelstein argues, that European leaders are constantly on the lookout for legalistic excuses to do nothing.

But threatening a fellow NATO member with violence, and especially acting on that threat, may spell the end of NATO. This would weaken the West’s position no end vis-à-vis the strategic threats coming from China, something Trump is so concerned about.

One thing for sure: both Putin and Xi would see the end of NATO as a cause for riotous celebration. Hence I’m tempted to think that Trump’s America doesn’t really regard either China or Russia as a strategic threat.

The words “utilising the US military is always an option” have been uttered in relation to a NATO member, not those evil regimes. And words, as I never tire of pointing out, do matter. These particular words may achieve something hitherto unthinkable: Europe and the US treating one another as foes, not friends.

 

Our Marxist government is waging a class war of annihilation, and an assault on cars is one prong of that offensive.

Bus and bicycle lanes strangulate traffic, risible speed limits penalise anyone driving at 21 mph, parking places either disappear or become costlier – this is all a throwback to the old days, when most car owners were wealthy, meaning, in the eyes of Marxists, thieves.

The situation changed the better part of a century ago, with private transport gradually becoming a classless norm. But Marxist dogma dies hard and it’s impervious to facts. Starmer and his accomplices have made only one concession to the jargon of Das Kapital: they’ve replaced ‘proletariat’ with ‘working people’.

Upon closer examination, one realises that what they really mean is non-working people, the indigent lumpen class dependent on the state for their livelihood. I can sympathise with the terminological predicament: it’s hard to describe a train driver on £80,000 a year as an oppressed pauper in need of liberation and assistance.

Another burr under Starmer’s blanket is old people, those leeches on the Exchequer. Those spongers collect pensions, get free medicines and public transport, fall ill at public expense – all while voting Tory and contributing little in the way of tax revenue.

The NHS is doing its level best to keep the mortality rate up, but swarms of wrinklies and crumblies still have the gall to stay alive and live a normal life. Not only that, but they still get behind the wheel and cause fatal accidents due to their failing eyesight, slowing reflexes and general cognitive decline.

Two pet Marxist hates converge: drivers and old people, but especially old drivers. Looking into my crystal ball, I anticipate the day when all oldies will have their licences taken away. But meanwhile, the state is taking a few intermediate steps.

Motorists over the age of 70 face mandatory eye and cognitive tests, and they won’t be allowed to self-report any problems or a lack thereof. The reporting will be done by government inspectors, who used to be called opticians, ophthalmologists or neurologists. Now they’ll have to add snitching to their qualifications.

Everyone agrees that people who can’t see properly, whatever age they may be, should have their eyesight corrected. If their vision is beyond correcting, they shouldn’t be allowed to drive – that much goes without saying. But the rationale offered by our Marxists for their new draconian measures is frankly pathetic.

In 2024, they point out with a QED smirk, 1,633 people died in road traffic accidents. Blimey. We gasp in horror on cue, but people across the Atlantic look at such statistics with barely concealed envy. In 2022, more than 42,000 people died on American roads, 25 times as many. And the US population is only five times the size of ours.

So forgive me for stifling my gasp. We simply have to accept that, when millions of people drive tonnes of steel at high speeds, some of them will bump into one another. And some such collisions will prove fatal. Alas, sometimes life is like that. The only way to eliminate car deaths is to eliminate cars.

That may still come, but meanwhile our Marxists claim they plan to reduce road deaths by 65 per cent in the next 10 years. That’s a worthy goal, and it would be even more so if they had a realistic way of achieving it. Judging by their statistical legerdemain, they have nothing of the sort. All they have is a congenital imperative to put their foot down.

But the overall death statistics aren’t all. Brace yourself: it’s specifically wrinklies who are automotive killers. Are you ready? Well, here it is: About 24 per cent of drivers killed were aged 70 or older, while 12 per cent of all road fatalities involved older drivers.

One thing about our Marxists is that they aren’t only subversive but also stupid. If you don’t believe me, look at the faces of Starmer, Reeves, Streeting or Rayner and see if you can spot a flicker of keen intelligence there. You’d be on a losing wicket, I can assure you.

If they were smarter, they’d realise that the first statistic is meaningless. To make it significant, they’d have to add that most of those accidents were caused by older drivers. Since they don’t say that, we are free to assume that some boy racers might have been involved too. (And older people may well die in the same accidents youngsters may walk away from.)

But wait, the second statistic says just that: 12 per cent of all deaths involved older drivers. Crikey. Anyone with a conscience would be up in arms, demanding that wrinklies be banned altogether, not just have their eyes tested.

However, anyone with a brain would check whether that statistic is out of proportion to the number of drivers over 70. Turns out it isn’t: such drivers make up 12.8 per cent of the motoring population. Hence they are below their statistically expected share of roadkill.

I shan’t claim that my concern about such measures, and especially the real animus behind them, is entirely disinterested. I’m in that murderous age group myself, and I don’t need Starmer to tell me whether or not I’m fit to drive, optically and cognitively.

My reflexes are perhaps 10 to 20 per cent slower than they were 50 years ago, but it’s not percentages but absolute values that matter. I’m prepared to stack my reflexes against Starmer’s, and I guarantee that my 80 per cent will still be quicker than his 100.

My cognitive ability might have declined too, but it’ll be a while before it has dropped down to the average level. However, having driven almost a million miles in my life, I – and most experienced drivers – know how to make allowances for age.

I for one certainly drive more sensibly now than I did even 20 years ago, never mind 50. I also tend to limit my time on the road over long hauls. If in the past I didn’t think twice before driving, say, 1,300 miles in one day, in my dotage I tend to break up such journeys into two legs or even three, thereby enriching roadside motels.

All the older drivers I know will tell similar stories. With age comes experience, and it makes up for some inevitable decrepitude.

Old people have another thing in common: we are all grown-ups, and most of us would rather be treated as such. We don’t need the state to tell us to wear glasses if we need them or not to drive when we become blind or gaga. We’ll look after ourselves, thank you very much.

Yet Marxists don’t treat anyone as a grown-up. Rather their tendency is to handle the population the way shepherds handle their flock. But don’t blame me: I didn’t vote for this Marxist cabal.

P.S. In parallel, they are going to lower the alcohol limit, doubtless in line with the Continent. That’s going to kill social life in the country, but then didn’t Marx write about “the idiocy of country life”?

P.P.S. Happy Epiphany Day!

Yesterday, following the abduction of Maduro, I wondered whose turn it was next. Which other country will be incorporated into Trump’s budding empire?

The prime candidates that crossed my mind were Colombia, Cuba, Greenland and perhaps Canada. However, since the US is unlikely to launch all those operations at once, the little matter of sequence comes to the fore.

Hence, I’m grateful to President Trump for clarifying the situation. Cuba, he explained, is a failing state on the road to perdition. She’ll get to that destination all on her own, without any help from the US army.

With Cuba thus crossed off the list of immediate targets, Colombia comes into focus. After all, her cocaine production rivals Venezuela’s oil industry, certainly in its present shape. Most of Colombia’s narcotic output ends up in the US, which may be regarded as a casus belli.

However, I doubt – and please correct me if I’m wrong – that Trump would countenance a US takeover of Colombian coca plantations, the way he plans to grab Venezuelan oil fields. The two projects may be equally lucrative, but appointing one of Trump’s sons as drug Barron might be seen as a bad PR move.

That’s why, for the time being, Trump has let Colombia’s Marxist chieftain Gustavo Petro get away with a warning. The warning came in the carefully phrased diplomatic language Trump favours: because Petro is a “sick man” who “likes making cocaine”, he should “watch his ass”.

Stoutly spoken, although it’s unclear what Petro must do to heed the warning. He can’t stop “making cocaine” because that would impoverish his people and make them hate him as much as Venezuelans hate Maduro. But anyway, he has been warned. Wait and see.

This leaves Canada and Greenland, both NATO members, the latter by being part of Denmark. Canada must become the fifty-first state of the US sooner or later, as Trump has said on numerous occasions. He could do it the hard way or the easy way; it’s up to Mark Carney, that jumped-up banker, to decide which.

As far as I know, so far Trump hasn’t issued any personal threats to Carney, nor suggested he should watch his donkey. That’s perhaps why the former Governor of the Bank of England shows no sense of urgency.

Nor is it clear what he could do to stop US troops sweeping across the border. Canada’s army, though well trained and armed, only numbers 65,000. That’s not enough to defend the whole 5,500-mile border separating the country from the US, should Trump decide to do a Putin. So Carney has to sit tight, hoping that such a frontal assault would be too much even for Trump to contemplate.

This leaves Greenland, and there I must rebuke the Donald for choosing a wrong PR strategy. The other day he regaled his press conference audience by stating that “we need Greenland from the standpoint of national security”.

All God’s children love national security, but Trump would have his work cut out for him trying to explain why that purpose can be best served by attacking a fellow NATO country. After all, the US already has a military presence in Greenland. Pitufflik Space Base is a vitally important strategic site, which is in Greenland due to the existing military agreement between the US and Denmark.

I’m sure the Danish government would be receptive to widening American military presence on the world’s largest island, should the Donald ask nicely. That’s not the case with the possibility of American invasion.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had said that “the US has no right to annex any of the three nations in the Danish kingdom”. Should Mette watch her derriere too?

It may be logistically possible for US commandos to land in Copenhagen the way they landed in Caracas, yank Mette out of her bed and deliver her, manacled and leg-ironed, to Brooklyn. But something tells me Trump, for all his ideas of how best to handle women, would hesitate to order such an op.

If I were his adviser, I’d recommend he change his whole approach to the problem. Any adman will tell you that successful campaigns all start with a neat slogan encapsulating the marketing strategy, and this is what I’m proposing.

The Donald loves variations on the MAGA theme, which he proved yesterday when promising to “make Venezuela great again”. It’s true that, before the Marxist takeover, Venezuela had been the richest country in Latin America. This justifies, after a fashion, the use of the word ‘again’.

However, “Make Greenland great again” lacks similar credibility: it never was great. However – and I hope the Donald is listening – it used to be, well, green. Admittedly, it was rather a long time ago, some 2.5 million years back.

These days, 80 per cent of the island is covered with ice, but that’s global warming for you. (Climata mutantur, as Romans didn’t say.) However, Trump could claim that he could make Greenland green again – and, moreover, had he been president 2.5 million years ago, the island would have remained green.

Since I’m better at advertising than at climatology, I haven’t considered all the ecological ramifications of this strategy. But from the standpoint of my erstwhile profession, it makes a lot of sense.

Those Greenland Eskimos – sorry, how crass of me forgetting that these days they must be called Innuits – would be happy to start growing grapes. Beats drilling holes in the ice in search of shivering fish.

In parallel, the personal element mustn’t be ignored. Miss Frederiksen is a socialist who has been married more than once. It shouldn’t be hard to uncover or, that failing, concoct some evidence of past sexual indiscretions or fiscal impropriety. That would give Trump personal leverage, and there’s no substitute for that in the art of making a deal.

Speaking of personal motives and getting back to Venezuela, it was Maduro’s choreographic performance that apparently sealed his fate. Last December, he had the audacity to perform a dance taking the mickey out of Trump’s swaying, fist-pumping moves. Rumours have it that Trump ordered the Caracas raid specifically because of that lack of respect.

Apparently, it’s also for personal reasons that he hasn’t even mentioned Maria Corina Machado as a potential president of Venezuela. On the surface of it, Miss Machado has all the necessary credentials.

She is a centre-right democratic politician who would have won the last election had she been allowed to stand. However, Maduro crossed her name off the ballot, which didn’t prevent Machado’s man, Edmundo González, winning by a landslide.

In the good tradition of Marxism, Maduro ignored the election result, forcing González into exile and Machado into hiding. Now they seem to have all the legitimacy they need to form Venezuela’s democratic government. But there’s a snag.

You see, Machado also delivered a personal slight to Trump, or rather the Nobel Committee did so on her behalf. The Donald desperately wanted to win the Nobel Peace Prize, an accolade he deserved for having stopped eight wars, most of which are still on-going.

Still, Trump had a valid subjunctive-mood claim. Had he been president at the time, he would have prevented, in no particular order, the Punic Wars, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Thirty Years’ War, the Hundred Years’ War and both World Wars.

But the Nobel Committee saw fit to overlook those irrefutable claims and award last year’s prize to Miss Machado instead. So she should watch her ass too, instead of harbouring political ambitions.

Trump has declared that the US is “in charge” of Venezuela. I don’t know how closely he has followed Latin American politics over the past century or so. In case he hasn’t followed it at all, Trump ought to be told that Yanqui Go Home placards are never far out of reach there.

Greenland is developing that artistic genre too, mutatis mutandis. Anti-American placards are held aloft all over the island, but then Trump is no Dale Carnegie. He doesn’t want to win friends, and he doesn’t mind losing those America already has.  

As I write this, Chairman Xi must be asking himself “And what am I, chop suey?” If Trump can launch in his own backyard an attack on a regime he dislikes, why can’t Xi do the same to Taiwan?

After all, though the Chavez-Maduro regime has dubious legitimacy, Trump and just about everyone else accepts that Venezuela is a sovereign country. China, on the other hand, offers no such recognition to Taiwan, which she regards as a rogue split-away province of the mainland.

And Xi hates Taiwan viscerally, at least as much as Trump hates Maduro and his gang. Moreover, Taiwan is only 250 miles from mainland China, whereas Venezuela is 2,800 miles from the US. If Venezuela is in the US sphere of influence, then Taiwan really must be ripe for plucking.

I can’t claim to be a reliable mind reader, but it’s unimaginable that such thoughts wouldn’t cross Xi’s mind. And Putin may be following the same train of thought.

Unlike the US and Venezuela, Russia and the Ukraine used to be the same country. The post-Maidan Ukraine is every bit as repulsive to Putin as Madura’s Venezuela is to Trump. So what, are we going to say quod licet Doni, non licet Vladi? Not on your nelly, Donald, Putin must be thinking. You’re no more Jupiter than I’m a bull. If Venezuela is your sphere of influence, then the Ukraine is mine, ten times over.

This is a caricature, but all caricatures are based on reality. The brilliant and daring raid of US commandos is worthy of admiration, and Maduro certainly deserves all he gets. But, as Newton taught, every action has a reaction. So will this one, but I can’t second-guess what it’ll be. More to the point, neither can anyone. Even more to the point, neither can Trump.

One could argue persuasively that Venezuela, that beachhead established in the Western Hemisphere by the evil axis of China, Russia, Iran and Cuba, presented a threat to US strategic interests.

Therefore, Trump must be praised for acting more decisively and successfully than JFK did in 1961. Then the US armed, trained and landed a Cuban exile force sent out to unseat the Castro regime. But then Kennedy got cold feet, didn’t deliver the promised air support and abandoned the landing party to its gruesome fate.

Trump, on the other hand, decided to dirty his hands on Venezuela, having first washed them of the Ukraine. Could this link be not only temporal but also causative?

The strategy document issued the other week spells out a non-interventionist, US-centred, practically isolationist policy. Trump evidently doesn’t regard bombing Caracas and kidnapping Maduro as a deviation from that policy – it’s more or less America’s domestic housekeeping.

Given Trump’s transparent contempt for all those jumped-up little countries pretending they can play in the global arena, it’s possible that there was some international deal struck that we know nothing about. The big boys, the US, China and Russia, may have agreed to give one another a free hand in their own bailiwicks: Eastern Europe for Russia, Taiwan and most of Southeast Asia for China, North and South America for the US.

Such a geopolitical deal could have been followed by a series of commercial ones, allowing US oil companies to claim back their assets Venezuela nationalised 50 years ago. In exchange, Russia and China would be allowed to ‘nationalise’, respectively, the Ukraine’s natural resources and Taiwan’s electronic industry. It goes without saying that the Trump family would get a slice of the action in all three cases.

This is, of course, conjecture, but it’s not groundless conjecture. Such an arrangement would be consistent with Trump’s statements and, more important, his actions over the past year.

Meanwhile, he has announced that the US would “run” Venezuela for a while, possibly quite a long while. This, though for the time being Trump has ruled out any further use of US military force.

How is he proposing to run Venezuela without GI boots on the ground? Judging by the rather understated resistance by the Venezuelan army, the great deal maker might have found some accommodation with the Maduro government, without Maduro.

But Quisling governments may create popular resistance, especially since the people of Venezuela detest Maduro and all his accomplices. And popular resistance may mean that Trump will have to use American troops, if only to secure the oilfields.

That would give further encouragement to China and Russia. If Trump can ‘run’ Venezuela by, for example, appointing Rubio as the country’s governor general, then why can’t Putin do the same with the Ukraine, only using, say, Lavrov in place of Rubio?

Many commentators reject appeals to international law, which they regard as a fiction. So it may be, to an extent. And anyway, neither European countries nor the US recognised the Maduro government as legitimate. Hence the only countries that insist on invoking international law are those belonging to what George Dubya Bush used to call the axis of evil.

Still, whatever we may think of international law, a series of multilateral treaties did create a quasi-legal framework for a global post-war order. Its principal precept is that countries shouldn’t attack one another, nor grab pieces of one another’s territory.

Say what you will about this arrangement, but at least it managed to preserve relative peace in Europe for almost 80 years. Russia has always placed herself outside that framework in word, but it more or less played along for decades, her occasional punitive expeditions to Eastern Europe notwithstanding.

Now not only Russia and China but also the US are governed by people who see no value in the post-war world order. The first two traditionally, and the US currently, see international relations in terms of undiluted exercise of naked power. It’s Kissinger’s realpolitik, but with a sinister and even more cynical dimension.

If my hunch is correct, and Trump has decided to reshape America as a regional, not global, superpower, and his foray into Venezuela is an extension of this new vision, then what we saw the other day was a show of weakness, not strength.

The US seems to be signalling her intention to divvy up the world – and its riches – among herself, China and Russia. Taking control of Venezuelan oil may be a way of strengthening America’s position in the hope of securing parity with China and superiority over Russia.

Much of this is guesswork – we don’t really know what goes on, nor what Trump’s plans are, nor whether he does have any plans worthy of the name. But do let’s remind ourselves of the time element: Trump only has three more years in the White House.

Moreover, when it comes to invading and ‘running’ other countries, the US is a sprinter, not a stayer. In Iraq, Libya and Syria, the Americans moved in at full pelt, got rid of some unsavoury rulers, tried to introduce American-style reforms to tribal societies, failed – and went home, leaving behind a blood-soaked chaos and swarms of desperate people fleeing to sunnier climes, mostly in Europe.

The US already has some 800,000 Venezuelans living there – would they like to have another million? Or does Trump intend to send the original 800,000 back to their Maduro-free homeland?

The Donald is hard to second-guess, even harder to understand. He doesn’t seem to have any discernible philosophy of life other than enriching himself and his family. That makes him unpredictable, which at times could be a strength, but more often a weakness.

Let’s wait and see, shall we? And as we do so, let’s place bets on which Latin American country will be next. Cuba? Colombia? I’m talking specifically about Latin America because I’m sure the Donald wants to leave Canada until last. And Greenland is only just in the Western Hemisphere, which is probably why James Monroe didn’t include it in his doctrine.

The time has come to rebrand it as the Trump-Monroe Doctrine, don’t you think? Yes, this does have a ring to it. So would Washington D.T., but those initials have unfortunte implictions.

America just isn’t the same as she was 37 years ago, when I last lived there.

Having become an outsider looking in, I don’t recognise the country I used to know well. And many of the changes can be explained with a single word: Trump.

Today’s news is all about Venezuela, whose capital was bombed yesterday, and whose president, Maduro, was captured by US special forces. ‘Captured’ was the word Trump used in his public announcement, but perhaps ‘kidnapped’ would be more accurate.

Neither I nor, by the sound of it, most Venezuelans will shed too many tears. In just a few years, that self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist, Maduro, did what Marxists-Leninists can be confidently predicted to do in any country they govern: beggar it.

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, which by itself ought to be enough to keep the population in food. So it was, until first Hugo Chávez and then Nicolás Maduro got into the act. The country’s economy quickly collapsed, but there has been excellent growth in other areas: starvation, hyperinflation, disease, crime, mortality rates and emigration.

However, before we rejoice in the couldn’t-have-happened-to-a-nicer-guy capture of Maduro, one wonders on what grounds Trump feels justified to treat a sovereign country that way, no matter how awful that country is.

He likes to mention the Monroe Doctrine, but the last time I looked that document didn’t say the US could invade at will any unpleasant country in the Western hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine was a stay-away message to European powers, mainly England and France.

The hemisphere was declared to be America’s sphere of influence, and no trespassing, thank you very much. But a sphere of influence is one thing, and kidnapping presidents of other countries is quite another.

The desire to stem the flow of drugs sounds like a pretext, not the reason. If Trump managed to curb the flow of illegal immigrants across the Mexican border without bombing Mexico City and kidnapping the country’s president, surely he could have found less violent ways of dealing with Venezuelan drug smugglers.

More likely is that Trump feels that his macho image as the world’s master has taken some beating, what with his pathetic efforts to force the Ukraine’s capitulation. Even at the risk of being known as a flat-track bully, he is prepared to flex his biceps, suck in his stomach and remind the world who is running it.

Still, if he had to do something like that, one can only wish he had targeted Starmer and Sadiq Khan, not Maduro. Yanking them out of England would have been harder logistically, but somehow more satisfying.

However, this isn’t the first time that the US has invaded a Latin American country. From Nicaragua in 1912 to Granada in 1983 and Panama in 1989, the US established some form in such undertakings.

I’m only mentioning direct involvements, not various coups the US inspired, underwrote and welcomed. Hence, when I talk about America changing under Trump, I can’t credit him with pioneering such a hands-on approach to politics in the Americas.

I mean something else, specifically the country’s Puritan, Bible-thumping heritage. One good thing about that legacy was America’s heightened sensitivity to fiscal impropriety in public office.

In my day, congressmen would get prosecuted for taking a few grand to lobby some dubious project. When greater sums were involved, all hell broke loose. I especially remember the ABSCAM scandal in the late 1970s, when congressmen, senators, mayors, city councillors and other politicians were convicted for bribery and corruption.

Yet the highest sum mentioned then was $50,000. Even adjusted for inflation, this is the sort of amount Trump’s family probably uses to tip waiters and parking attendants every month.

During his first year back in the White House, Trump has doubled his net worth to $6.6 billion. His son-in-law, Jared ‘Nepo Baby’ Kushner has become a billionaire, largely thanks to his burgeoning business in the Middle East following Trump’s visit there.

I’m not suggesting that any of those dealings were illegal, but they certainly would have been regarded as immoral back in the 1980s. The words CONFLICT OF INTEREST would’ve been emblazoned in 60-point type on the front pages of tabloids.

Trump’s accepting the gift of a 757 Boeing from Qatar, a prime sponsor of terrorism, would then have been regarded as a bribe in some quarters. But I can understand why the Donald couldn’t turn the gift down. The Qataris had thoughtfully decorated the plane in the style of the late King Farouk, which struck a deep aesthetic chord in the president’s heart.

Much of Trump’s new wealth comes from the cryptocurrencies flogged by his three sons and wife Melania. One advantage of a cryptocurrency – or, depending on how you look at it, a disadvantage – is that it’s short on accountability. Large purchases could easily be veiled bribes, and the air is thick anyway with allegations of Trump’s shady dealings with some unsavoury foreign leaders.

Grassroots Americans would have been aghast at that sort of thing back when I lived among them – even if there was nothing indictable unearthed. It was assumed that a US president faced stricter moral requirements than, say, an Atlantic City property developer.

The latter only had to be concerned with the letter of the law; the former, also with the dignity of the office. Of course, the word ‘dignity’ doesn’t belong in the same sentence with ‘Trump’ any more than the word ‘taste’ does.

For example, the president regularly appears in TV commercials, peddling his Trump Watches that cost between $500 and $3,000. This surely brings the presidency into disrepute. After all, there used to be a certain grandeur associated with the office, a certain aura of sagacity and probity.

That might have had to do more with perception than with reality, but perception matters with public figures who personify the country. And what kind of perception results from a US president going on TV to shill for products he endorses, “the same deal I’d give my own mother, I’m gonna give you”?

Had Carter or Reagan done all those things, there would have been a thunderous public outcry, transcending party affiliation. Americans, descendants of those Puritan Mayflower refugees, wouldn’t have stood for seeing the aura of presidency punctured by crass commercialism.

Yet, from where I sit, and I did tell you I’m an outside observer these days, criticism of Trump’s fiscal behaviour in the US is confined to the Democrats. The Republicans seem to be closing ranks behind the president, with no cross-party ethical standards anywhere in sight.

Oh well, if someone leaves a country for 37 years, he ought to be prepared to see some changes. So I was, but I never expected that changes could run so deep.

P.S. This comment by one of my readers makes me sorry I didn’t think of it first: “I await Queen Camilla’s uniquely profound understanding of the recent terrible fire in Switzerland, based on her having once burnt her finger while lighting a fag.”