The Trump coronation: Sleepwalking towards an Irish Trump

THAT old comfort, that go-to failsafe in times of distress: “Sleep on it and it won’t seem so bad in the morning” has not worked. 

Nor is it likely to anytime soon. The prospect of the grotesque, unhinged Donald Trump making life-or-death decisions in the White House operations room during an unfolding world crisis seems even more appalling this morning than it did in the early, half-asleep hours of Wednesday when America’s electoral system — though, most importantly, not the country’s popular vote — nominated this man, one whose behaviour suggests he is absolutely unaware of even the idea of a moral compass, to succeed Barack Obama.

The liberal, tolerant and progressive world is appalled, frightened too. That constituency, goaded and derided by a resurgent, triumphant neo-right just as it was after Britain voted to quit the European Union, is even more baffled and distressed that this dreadful decision is the culmination of more than 250 years of democracy in the superpower that routinely trumpets that it is the best exemplar of that noble philosophy. That so many conservatives and old-school Republicans, including all living Republican presidents, felt obliged to make their intention of not voting for Trump public just shows how very dark and uncharted a moment this is. That the counterbalance planned in the American constitution — a Senate and a House of Representatives controlling a dangerous president — does not apply as Republicans control both makes that darkness even more intimidating.