It's gratifying to see a sensible and measured discussion emerging in this thread. I hope that we can keep it up.

To respond to DMcG, I agree with what you say when you compare the rise of the Nazis in the 30s with what went on last week (and its long build-up since 2016). But I do believe, despite the threat which I would not wish to understate, that there is still enough backbone in western democracies on both sides of the Atlantic to see off the kind of assault we saw last week. There was a severe fragility in German society at that time, in a country recently ravaged by a war that had decimated its young generation and left the country's economy and infrastructure in tatters, ripe conditions for a charismatic despot to hoodwink millions of people into believing in the false hope and nationalist exceptionalism he was peddling. We've seen echoes of some of that in Trump as he appealed to the "left behind" and in "make America great again." but the conditions in the country were nowhere near as conducive to his dream of takeover as they were for Hitler. I want to think that Trump's populist shenanigans will prove to be self-limiting and that there will be sufficient outrage and revulsion to prevent anyone like him from getting power again. That will take work in the form of serious public debate and self-examination - and education. I can't think of any American leader in my sentient lifetime that I've been even remotely a fan of, but we now need Joe to give us a few years of calm. And we need to think very carefully about the actions to be taken against Trump. We don't need a fallen hero, or a martyr, constantly stirring it in the background. I don't know what we can do about his dynasty, however. Americans do seem to love their dynasties...