“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.”