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Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a piece titled ‘The battle cry of the politically homeless’ in which I lamented the toxic tribalism that’s infecting our politics and pitting neighbor against neighbor, sister against brother, parent against child. ‘Democracy doesn’t die in the darkness; it dies when politics become team sports, in full view of a bloodthirsty, cheering electorate.’ At the end I wondered, ‘We will return to the Dark Ages or we will evolve. Is that likely? I dunno. Have we evolved that much from the Roman Colosseum? Barreling into 2020 — it doesn’t seem like it.’ In the last year, the globe has been ravaged by a pandemic that put the ineptitude of American institutions and leaders on display for the world.

To win in November, Trump should seek inspiration from President Alexander Lukashenko, the 65-year-old autocrat who has ruled Belarus since 1994. He trounced his liberal opponent in the presidential election in August with 80 percent of the vote. I’m not suggesting Trump emulate Lukashenko’s methods. Among other things, the man dubbed ‘Europe’s last dictator’ disqualified his three main political opponents at the beginning of the race, imprisoning two of them. He has never won an election with less than 75 percent of the vote, although none have been found to be free and fair by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an election monitoring body.

‘Have you guys been following 4Chan?’ asks Marjorie Taylor Greene in a 2017 video. A mysterious ‘patriot’ named ‘Q’, Greene explains, is prophesying the downfall of satanic ‘swamp creatures’ in Washington, DC, Hollywood and other liberal fiefdoms. Is Greene a kind of female Alex Jones? No: she is now a Republican congressional candidate in Georgia and, in all likelihood, headed for the House of Representatives. Only weeks ago, an investigation by Facebook discovered thousands of groups and pages, boasting millions of members and followers, dedicated to QAnon conspiracy theories. In July, Twitter banned more than 7,000 accounts associated with the movement.

The romantic plans of a Kazakh bodybuilder named Yuri Tolochko have become one more casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. He was going to marry his ‘fiancée’, Margo, a silicone sex doll, in March, but they both agreed on the need to delay. ‘My baby supported me on this. We are determined and our mood is good.’ His Instagram feed depicts their domestic idyll: a bald, muscle-bound man gazes adoringly at a pneumatic blonde who, it must be said, stares back somewhat blankly. You might already know this if you get your news from Russian outlets like RT — Russia Today — or Sputnik. Their websites have an unerring eye for the human-interest stories that make for irresistible clickbait.

It is alarming how psychiatric diagnoses have crept into the political commentary. Donald Trump, we’ve been told, has narcissistic personality disorder, malignant narcissism, narcissistic alexithymia, bipolar disorder, hypomanic temperament, delusional disorder, paranoia, senile dementia, extreme hedonism, histrionic personality disorder, impulse disorder, attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. He’s also been called a sociopath and psychopath. Even normality has, in Trump’s hands, been transmogrified — pathologized — as ‘malignant normality’. Many psychiatric professionals have attempted to make such diagnoses, but they are wrong. President Trump does not demonstrate any diagnosable mental illness.