Gentleman Joe versus the Maga champion? Machiavelli would die laughing…

Nine months after the election he comprehensively lost, the spectre of Donald Trump – darkly menacing, subversive and apparently immune from prosecution – continues to cast a shadow over US democracy and America’s global standing, distorting policy and poisoning political life. How can this be? Why is this horror movie still running?

Trumpism, like other fascist variants, is a disease, a blight – a noxious far-right populist-nationalist miasma that taints and rots all it touches. Older Europeans share a folk memory of fascism. But too many Americans just don’t get it. The...