It’s now over a year since President Trump took office, and what a year it has been.  I argued then that perhaps his lack of orthodoxy might prove innovative in many ways and this, in turn, may prove of net benefit.

To some small extent, you could argue that this turned out to be true, in the case of North Korea.  But not in many other areas, either at home in the US or abroad though POTUS would claim otherwise.

What is obvious is that POTUS has undermined US influence worldwide as Trump has tried to emulate Putin as an authoritarian bombast.  Happily, the US constitution has mitigated against this but that has not deterred the president from tweeting his unruly thoughts that he obviously believes to be ‘tablets from the mountain’. (I will leave the psychological analysis for others more qualified.)

What Trump fails to understand that the USA is a democracy and leadership of a democracy carries inviolable demands including consensus and cultural respect and tolerance.  Trump has been just about restrained but he is leading his country into a dangerous direction of authoritarianism as exemplified by his pal Putin.

I guess that very few of those who voted for Trump have any idea of this, but this is a facet of populism which is oft ignored.  Many political regions of the world accept authority rather than democracy and it would be fair to say that liberal capitalism has much evil to answer for.  But beware authoritarianism as an alternative where, by and large, one election win, usually lasts a lifetime.

So now Trump and Putin are in this together, they believe they are the right leaders of their nations, they believe only they know the way.  I, for one, don’t share their views.