Badri Raina 
As the world hurtles each day faster and faster into the terminal womb of Chaos, the gods seem to have elected Donald Trump to be the enfant terrible whose narcissistic suave charm may see the project through.
Flush with victory and the conviction that his life surely was spared by an evangelical god for a great purpose, Trump’s charming ejaculations bearing upon what he means to do with the world may remind many of the so-instructive scene in Chaplin’s masterpiece, The Great Dictator, in which the dictator (read the Fuhrer) is shown alone with a huge plastic globe with nations etched on it, kicking, surmising, turning it over now this way, and now that, as a plaything which he means to make all his own.
Let us recall that during his first term as president, Trump openly regretted not having the same sort of loyalty from his military generals as Hitler had.
Thus, in no time after his reinstatement from convicted felon to American president, the world watches in awe as he spreads Gaza, Canada, Greenland, Panama on his plate of conquests-to-come, and China, Mexico, and what do you know, even the International Criminal Court to be set to rights without loss of time or money.
A world prostrate in jaw-dropping wonder, speculates: can this be true? Can he, will he do it? Will no one stand in his way?
And the speculation is not idle.
Look at what he has already achieved: he has placed the unelected, unaccountable, non-authorised-by-Congress, world’s richest man in an untouchable saddle of authority to finish off all and sundry in the institutions, in the bureaucracy, everywhere, wherever, who have been accustomed to follow the constitution and the rule of law rather than the principle of loyalty to the dictator.
News channels like NBC, CNN, still speaking their piece – (ah that yet-unconquered First Amendment – for how much longer no one living, however lawfully in America, may now truly know) – reference some brave-hearts in the justice system who have made bold to say “hold”; but does not Trump know he has his men in the supremest of courts when and if such matters go there?
Killed with kindness
As to the world still beyond American borders, the tariffs, the sanctions, the threats to take-back etc., are only the least part of the playful dictator’s brazen armoury.
Overtaken by a grand fancy laced with a Damien smile (not even those whose commitment to a rule-based international order remains an article of faith are able to say with any conviction that his purpose is a delusion merely), this Fuhrer of our day with the corresponding Duce from Tel Aviv by his side, has the innocent gall to tell the Palestinians in Gaza how they may, after all, have been killed with kindness, so that the land now a rubble sanctified by human remains, can be tastefully rebuilt as a Mediterranean riviera while their survivors are nicely shunted off to ensure the real-estate is available for new, delectable development which the conquerors may duly grace and settle in.
How instructive the cool method in this Nazi madness: lebensraum, lebensraum, vacate the land, clear a path, o ye wretched and sinful Amalek of the day, so that god’s chosen may find the full spread they were promised four thousand years ago.
Such is the reality of this daring that many are reminded of the appeasement that ensured Hitler’s entry into Czechoslovakia. Only when he went into Poland did hackles rise as the British declared war.
Ah, that same Britain should today be so on the side of the marauders.
The point is this: is there anyone in this day and age who might truly declare war, more than making disagreeable statements for the record?
For example, will the destiny of the Palestinians weigh more with the canny prince of Saudi Arabia than tariffs and sanctions? Not to speak of others whose hearts bleed in native Arabic for fellow Palestinians.
And are there nations whose mouth’s may be watering to install their own Musk’s in such high places, so they may openly shoulder to shoulder, destroy the clout of constitutional systems and laws thereof and give royalty to those installed but not quite crowned yet?
How may poor Adani be ruing the alleged deeds he has been caught in; had he not been so caught, might not Trump and the American example have opened a similar path for him in open daylight?
Will China and Russia look on while the Palestinians are cleansed out of Gaza and the West Bank?
Will Europe, challenged by her own right-wing effulgence, make political averments but privately applaud the deed in Palestine, should it transpire?
Will India hope something similar may be attempted in our backyards?
Do not think this is idle chatter: the Second Coming may be here, not of the Saviour but of the antichrist.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.