Trump announces his bid for 2024 and all liberal America can do is shrug

Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Charlie Chaplin — The Great Dictator (1940)

The spread and rise of Qanon conspiracy theory lunacy, white supremacy, Covid denialism, anti-vaxx, anti-public health, anti-migrant bigotry, Islamophobia, anti-reason, anti-science and an attempted coup to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election during which five people were killed — these were the fruits of Donald J. Trump’s one term presidency.

The fact that this bloviating fascistic demagogue is not only still at large but has just felt emboldened enough to announce that he intends to run for the White House in 2024, this is profoundly obscene when you consider that his role in inciting the Capitol Riot that took place on 6 January 2021 would in some countries have already seen him placed up against the wall.

This is not to in any way mount a defence of the liberal order whose collapse gave birth to Trumpism — far from it. On the tombstone of this dead but not yet buried liberal order is engraved the disaster of Afghanistan, the murder of Iraq and Libya, and the unleashing of an upsurge in…