When my politically opposed friends Dub a proxy Democrat and let’s call her Sally, a Trumpite, get together it’s akin to tectonic plates grinding off one another. Maria cares more about Cypriot affairs but knows external politics can affect this island. Loutish behaviour towards politicians in Ireland opened a topic that shifted beyond the Emerald Isle.

Sally said, ‘At least they didn’t try to shoot the ones they disagree with like poor Donald.’

Dub snapped, ‘Since when was that brute ever poor! A Lee Harvey Oswald thought jumped into a few minds I’ve spoken to.’

Appalled, Sally said Dub was accusing Donald of an allegedly dark ops set up without proof, and did Dub really think he would risk making himself a target?

That was the Democrat’s deep state foul rumour machine. (Sally seeks out internet conspiracy theories.) Who was responsible, she asked, for a very obvious unprotected security malfunction and the reasons offered for the oversight, limp.

The turning of Trump’s head at the right moment was suspect, Dub argued, and as the would-be Republican assassin was shot, he was unable to state his motives. 

‘I would have expected a narcissist like Trump to have pooped his boxers but it was almost as if he had rehearsed his reaction.’ Dub recalled a movie she’d seen where a former ace sniper was conned into a protection assignment and then framed for assassination, adding ‘Well, at least, the good thing about the US is the freedom creatives have, like you Brits, to portray their leaders and government organisations as not always squeaky clean.’  

Sally countered that the Irish, with their Ireland-heritage American presidents are Democrat poodles who fear a man of non-Irish origin gaining the office.

Dub rubbished that saying in spite of the affection held for Biden, the Irish government stood against him in support of Gaza’s right to statehood.

Sally was exultant that the failed shot had increased Donald’s popularity. ‘It was divine intervention, as he said.’

Maria told her not to be silly. ‘He acts like he’s John the Baptist’s understudy for Jesus’ Second Coming. That sinful, hypocritical man is shamelessly using God, and the gullible swallow it.’

Dub laughed, saying we should watch out for the posters of Trump’s ear and its big bandage rival sales of Van Gogh’s self-portrait.

‘He’ll start comparing himself with Lazarus before long.’ Maria snorted.  

Biden, with common sense prevailing, gave Kamala Harris her shot. Awkward in off-the-cuff interviews, professionally Harris is smart, legally experienced and Trump’s polar opposite. If she wins, women’s rights can depend on her, Ukraine and allies can depend on her, and perhaps even Gaza.

Like Dub, I can’t fathom women like Sally who find Trump attractive or charismatic. Sally insisted Donald is vigorous and sexy.

Dub laughed out loud. ‘Biden’s med records are open to the public, Trump keeps his close to his puffer pigeon chest. You really think a man who sexually degrades women, is sexy? You’re all fecking macho man masochists!’  

On the way home Maria sighed, ‘Sally’s besotted with that scoundrel; she calls him Donald like she knows him personally and, old as she is (75), I think she dreams of him, you know,’ crossing herself for the sinful image that had entered her mind.

I wished she’d kept that to herself because the notion of Sally fantasising about sex with Trump once presented to memory, was not easily erased.

When Abe Lincoln spoke of ‘the stormy present’, little did he imagine how the word Stormy would enter US criminal history or that the man with a criminal record attached to it, allegedly encouraging followers to usurp beloved US democracy, could run for a second presidential term, smug that some Supreme Court judges literally, flew his flags while he was being charged.

In his 1927 poem ‘Desiderata’ American Max Ehrmann wrote, ‘… for the world is full of trickery but let this not blind you to what virtue there is.’ and ‘Whether or not it is clear to you, … the universe is unfolding as it should.’ 

Politicians and voters should ponder and draw on the poem’s timeless wisdom.