Irish Examiner View: Trump's dangerous delusions

Donald Trump's refusal to accept the outcome of the US elections is pathetic and sad, farcical, and increasingly dangerous.

Many of us, maybe in wilder younger days, will have seen an alcoholic linger at a closed bar, hoping for just one more drink, one that might taste all the better because it would be illicit. If the first reaction was a kind of there-but-for-the-grace-of-fate-go-I bemusement, the second might be less sanguine, more judgemental. The third, if there is a third one, might be anger; anger that someone, for whatever reason, had become so enslaved to addiction. At that point, it might be reasonable to wonder if reality might ever intrude on a life so unrailed, so lost. To wonder if redemption might call.

Though US President Donald Trump does not drink - one of the many, many things he does not do - he has been rattling the shutters of a closed bar like a befuddled alcoholic since last weekend when even the most cautious observers recognised that he was to be a one-term president. His refusal to accept the vote is pathetic and sad, farcical, and increasingly dangerous. America, and the world, may recognise the vulnerabilities his narcissism brings but it is far more difficult to understand those, like the attorney general William Barr, who encourage Trump's unhinged fantasies. That so many millions of Americans believe - some Irish people too - without even a whiff of evidence that the election was a swizz may well be the most significant mass delusion since the early 1930s.