WASHINGTON, DC

TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, which sees its victims rise to stratospheric levels of negative hyperbole when talking about Donald Trump, is at such levels after his speech to the World Economic Forum at Davos, that it has been declared a pandemic.

“At first we thought we had it contained in seriously Democratic and woke states,” says Professor Rex Nervus of the Sad Sack Corporation, which monitors hysteria in the age of the internet; “but it’s broken free to pandemic levels with extraordinary vigor and is now spreading everywhere Trump’s words or actions reach, even with people who are not sure who the man is. As far North as Iceland and as far south as South Africa and Australia. People who would not recognize the President in a photograph now hate him with a strength often attributed to fanatics for their sworn enemies. And he’s blamed for everything. His actions are held out as unique, his effect on the world is multiplied, his impact exaggerated beyond reason. Some of this can be explained by his own tendency to exaggerate and a crude practice of verbalizing what he is actually thinking. All Presidents have thought like Trump from time to time but they were careful not to tell the world. Listen to the Nixon tapes. Trump just has no filter. We put much of the reaction to his policies to a supreme ignorance of history, which is now peddled like costume jewellery at a market stall. He’s not the first President to introduce tariffs; he’s not the first President to overthrow a corrupt third-rate dictator accused of pushing drugs; he’s certainly not the first President to want further land for the United States. Ask the Mexicans about that. His country’s arguments with Canada date back to the American War of Independence. Indeed, Canada is Canada today because of American threats and invasions (*one of them an Irish invasion). Trump is boastful, egocentric, and often acts like a rich frat boy with mob boss ambitions, but he is anxious to bring blue collar industry back to the United States and give real lives to millions who have not shared in the tech boom and whose futures are pretty bleak right now. He wants to try and defeat the drugs tsunami which has swamped his country, and to stop the flood of illegal immigrants to the United States which has been pouring in for decades. He has been elected to do all this. Yes, he won an election. There are millions of people who support him. His actions upset a whole class of people across the world who, even if they don’t know it, have had their lives courtesy of an American dollar. While threatened by Communism, the Americans were willing to pay that price; since the end of the Communist threat (if you discount California, Minnesota and New York City), and with the rise of China, America has been less and less willing to carry that old burden. Hence, the essential redundancy of NATO. It was established to counter the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union died in 1991. Too many people are still living as if that never happened. Putin’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. Those days are over. Have been over for quite some time. Mr Trump is just the first American President to tell the truth about it. Everything that went before is now up for grabs. If Trump is successful and he reboots his country the way he wants, his legacy may be better than people wish for. If he is not, there’ll be other administrations of different hues. The world will continue to turn. Much of the Trump Derangement Syndrome is a reaction to comfort zones being disturbed. Elites have gotten too used to the status quo. Which is what happened to the Soviet Union.”

• The IRA in 1867, yes 1867 – ED