The thing about Trump…and I have said little and written less about him. The thing about Trump…and it’s probably already been said, is not so much about him but about how people react to him. I have seen people quivering with rage after hearing his outrageous droll. I have known amicable conversations stop abruptly, if someone says something positive about him. I have heard all the lazy jokes like the ones you find in Christmas crackers that are so predictable and so not funny.

It is quite hard to understand the visceral hatred that he triggers in people. They call it “Trump derangement syndrome” It is an instant emotional revulsion that, I think, doesn’t actually relate to what he might have achieved in his term or how it might compare with the legacy of other presidents or world leaders or the long list of dictators, corrupt demagogs and tyrants in history. Trump it seems is in a league of his own.

It could be that what so really infuriates people is the way that he plays outside the box, how he dribbles out just what is on his mind without a care in the world. He says what he thinks. He can be rude and coarse and brutally offensive, in a way that is unworthy of his position, bringing the office of president into disrepute and making his nation a laughing stock in the world. And he couldn’t care less because it is what he does that counts. That, in the end, is what should matter.

But, and hear is my troubling thought, I believe he has gone too far, even for him, this time. I fear for him. I remember my mother telling me that Hitler didn’t last long after he compared himself to Christ. Years later she expressed the same fear about John Lennon after his infamous interview in 1966.

And I have sometimes wondered, strange as it may seem, if Donald Trump was possibly the West’s only hope. Now I wonder if his recent blasphemy will trigger its’ fall.