The implications of all the things the president-elect promised to do are terrifying. True, many of them sound improbable, and perhaps wise counsel and constitutional restraints will prevail. But that is not guaranteed

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Charles Darwin could not believe that a kindly God would create a parasitic wasp that injects its eggs into the body of a caterpillar so that the larva may consume the host alive. The ichneumon wasp was a challenge to Darwin’s already diminishing faith. We may share his bewilderment as we contemplate the American body politic and what vile thing now squats within it, waiting to be hatched and begin its meal.

Stunned disbelief, a condition at which we are beginning to be adept, is a form of denial that fades quickly, but not smoothly. It vanishes by steps, two forward, one back. But by inauguration day in January, we’ll be mouthing the words “President Trump” without incredulity or mirth. The danger is that it will begin to seem normal, this unique tragedy of national self-harm whereby a suspected con-man (the Trump University case, one of many, comes to trial on 28 November), this narcissistic and cynical vulgarian of limited attention span becomes the most powerful man on earth, ready by his own account to begin his assault on liberal democracy, rational discourse, civil liberties, and all manner of civil decencies, which are known to him as political correctness.

There will be pundits and flunkies eager to persuade us just how acceptable the new situation is. But the contest for the presidency was too long and revealed too much to be forgotten. Mario Cuomo, governor of New York, famously said: “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.” A nice formulation. If it’s true then Trump’s poetry was misogyny, race hatred, xenophobia, petty vengefulness and reckless ignorance. On the stump there was hardly a dark human impulse that he failed to display or exploit.

And if that was the poetry, what hope from the lesser form, the prose? If, by chance, Trump meant what he said (his supporters will be watching), it will be government by bonfire: the Paris accords on climate change; the hard-won nuclear deal with Iran; various trade agreements; then he must pressure Saudi Arabia and Japan to acquire nuclear weapons; undermine the mutual aid aspect of “obsolete” Nato, and so risk a Russian incursion into the Baltic states; annihilate the families of terrorists; begin a trade war with China by means of a discredited protectionism; reinstate torture as an arm of foreign policy; build a 2,000-mile wall along the Mexican border; block Muslims from entering the US; vastly increase military spending.

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And at home: above all, “lock up” his opponent, as promised at a thousand rallies; go after hostile newspapers; go after the women who claimed he sexually assaulted them; slash taxes, especially for the super rich; abolish Obama’s healthcare programme and leave 24 million people without medical cover; slash government programmes for the poor and unemployed; “create” 25m jobs in 10 years; scrap environmental regulation; re-ignite the coal industry; deport illegal immigrants by the million; borrow billions, and murmur about defaulting on US debt; pack the supreme court with ideological conservatives as vacancies arise.

Prosaic indeed, and much of it, one hopes, impossible campaign bluster. But this is the mindset, and this will be a president with awesome power in his command of Congress and Senate. The Tea Party – Trump’s John the Baptist faction – once so high-minded about government borrowing in the Obama days, will find it no longer cares so much about debt. And around us non-Americans, the world order must begin to change. Are we entering the Age of the Strongman? America confronts the possibility of adding its leader’s name to those of Putin, Xi Jinping, Assad, Sisi, Erdoğan, Netanyahu, Duterte, Nazarbayev, Lukashenko … Shaming, but entirely possible with a president so showily contemptuous or ignorant of his country’s constitutional history and traditions of free expression.

The world’s hopes will cling to the strength of US democratic institutions and the balm of sensible advice, though the world according to Newt Gingrich is not a reassuring prospect. Meanwhile, there are some difficult lessons to learn. The “populist tide” common to Europe as well as the US presents the democratic left with a unique problem, a circle it has yet to square. Its traditional constituencies are turning away. We are witnessing a citizens’ revolt against globalisation and the multicultural ambitions of elites in faraway capitals. This is a crisis of identity, a sense of betrayal, among the incumbent working class of many nations. Doorstep concerns have been too easily dismissed as dimly patriotic, ignorant or racist. The electoral space has been left wide open to the demagogic right, the conspiracy and misinformation websites and cynical tabloids.

It’s an issue that in this country Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party has yet to confront – and it is uniquely difficult. It’s more likely there are a thousand small answers to the problem than one grand solution. Abolishing faith schools in Britain that harmfully segregate our children would be one little step. The American experience as well as our own EU referendum demonstrated a familiar paradox: it is the more rural, all-white communities that fear immigration most, while mixed-race metropolitan communities fear it least. Familiarity does not breed contempt.

The new American president will soon be draining the Washington swamp, the one that has been properly generous, both in Clinton’s concession speech and the Obamas’ welcome of Mr and Mrs Trump to the White House. The departing president, the first lady and the defeated democratic candidate understand the importance of an orderly transition. Trump in defeat would not have been remotely so mature; he had threatened to declare a “rigged” election, blindly risking nightmarish disorder. He’s a petulant, ignorant child, strangely promoted above the grownups.

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He might well be contained by wise counsel, constitutional restraints and practical realities, but the dominant concern will remain his character. There will be crises and he will have to deal with them. He doesn’t appear to be capable, or even stable. For all its faults, the American electoral process puts candidates under pressure to reveal the inner person. Commentators have turned to that hallowed manual of mental illness, the DSM, to try and diagnose Donald Trump’s. Malignant narcissism? Borderline personality disorder? Or, as the satirist Christopher Buckley has proposed, Mexican border personality disorder?

The hope is that Trump was lying to supporters at his rallies, but if by wretched fortune he actually manages to govern as he campaigned, when he projected himself as an autocrat and misogynist, intolerant of dissent, dismissive of the limits on presidential power, keen to sanction torture, racially hostile, paranoid in his nationalism, bloated with simple answers to complex problems, then we would have to concede that the US has elevated to its highest office a fascist by any other name. At present it looks improbable. But it’s going to be terrifying.