THE BEST THING about being away from the Internet and television for the last week was that, for seven blissful days, I did not once think about Donald J-for-Jackass Trump. That by itself transformed an intensely challenging week in which I spent two days – 48 full hours – in a plane, a train, an airport or a train station, 22 of those hours straight in the same clothes – into a proper holiday; I’ve still got seven travel hours ahead of me but that’s now going to be a day of grinning over Fat Nixon beginning to get his just desserts.

The best thing that’s happened in years – or at least since 9 November 2016 – was Tuesday’s guilty plea by Michael Cohen, who stands in relation to Donald Trump as Silvio Dante stands to Tony Soprano – and what a cheerful lanyap thought it is that Don Jnr, that snot-nosed little wanker, who plays the role of Chrissy in the reality show that is the White House Apprentice, might leave the cast in the same way as Chrissy did The Sopranos! The conviction of Trump’s friend and former campaign manager, Paul Manafort – whom Trump called “a good man” this week – also puts another nail in Trump’s coffin, with three more – Michael Flynn, Richard Gates & George Papadopoulos – soon to be hammered.

Even if the Repbulicans will never bury the fat firetruck.

And now I’m thinking that it’s no accident that no institute of higher learning in the USA values the humanities any more.

American universities for years have been tailoiring their curriculua to produce the graduates needed by huge corporations. The world might be better off with more poets and painters but capitalism-gone-wild needs more MBAs and marketing men, so guess which faculty is going to get the budget? The model of MacDonald’s University has proved dominant, with the Ivy League simply being a titch more coy about handing over its honour. It’s almost laughable but insitutions that were developed to serve higher thought are now firmly committed to higher profits.

What relevance has history to them? Why contemplate yesterday at all when you could be working towards today’s bottom line?

But anyone who who thinks back to 1978 might recall the sign under which, in a clearing in the jungle in Guyana, an insane American preacher administered lethal kool-aid to 918 people, all fatally demonstrably loyal believers: the quote on a blackboard in the meeting hall/churchroom of Jonestown, from the philosopher, George Santayana, read, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it”.

It seems Americans have forgotten Germany, 1929-39.

There was no one in 1945, not even his highest ranking and most loyal officers, who did not know that Adolf Hitler was completely insane.

Germany’s – and the world’s – problem was that so few would admit it in 1929-39; or even discern it; even after Kristallnacht; even after the yellow stars (and the pink stars); even after the trains rolled into the stations and the smoke rose out of the chimneys.

In 1939-45, Adolf Hitler had become so ruthless a dictator in Germany, it was difficult to recall that he had taken power constitutionally just a few years before. The weakness of the opposition party, the economic disaster of hyperinflation after the American recall of debt after the Stock Market Crash in 1929, the rabid rampant enthusiasm of a Nazi Party driven by its conviction of white supremacy – and, crucially, the deliberate, self-interested support of the richest people in Germany – led President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor in 1933; rich Germans and the political ruling class thought Hitler was a fool who could be controlled.

Well, he showed us all.

If, i.e., we remember.

Consider today’s fool; and the danger he poses.

Manafort’s conviction and Cohen’s guilty cop on Tuesday, prove – beyond a reasonable doubt – that Trump’s closest cohorts are criminals; and that gives the world hope that there will be more Americans who know right from wrong on 6 November, 2018 – the date of the mid-term elections – than there were Germans on 27 February, 1933 – the date of the Reichstag fire, Hitler’s most brazen act in securing power, the equivalent of Trump’s strenuous attempts to stop the independent counsel.

We know already the danger of unquestioning loyalty to the wrong man in Germany, 1933, or Guyana, 1978; and we see the danger of a Republican party that stands, in relation to its current leader, in the same position that the Nazis of Germany stood to their leader; they have been openly, proudly, drinking their kool-aid since 9 November 2016.

And Edmund Burke reminds us that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

If there are not enough decent Americans to save the world in November from this raving madman, we will not need a soothsayer or seer-man or to know what will happen to American, and the world, in the near future.

We will either recall the fairly recent past.

Or repeat it.

BC Pires is hoping for the best but preparing for the liverwurst