November 11th carries mixed emotions. Armistice Day and my son Rory’s birthday. Remembering the dead from horrendous human conflict and a jolly lunch in a local pub.

This year, though, I am also processing my first ever visit to India and the political carnage across the Atlantic. The former was so all-encompassing that I failed to write a monthly blog for the only time in a decade; the latter has caused me to question my feelings about a country I have loved since I emerged wide-eyed from JFK aged 17.

We too have been ‘led’ by a mendacious narcissist, insulated by wannabes with delusions of adequacy. But for the American people to swallow the poison twice takes some believing, regardless of the feeble opposition and Kamala Harris’s forgettable campaign.

Trump’s focus on the domestic budget, spiced with the concocted economic impact of immigration, eclipsed Harris’s vague unifying message. This I can understand.

What invades my dreams is that a clever question (‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’), posed by Ronald Reagan in 1980, repeated by Donald Trump in 2024, succeeded in cleansing a candidate who is corrupt, vulgar and unhinged, a racist, a misogynist, and a convicted criminal. Not in Russia, North Korea or the Third World but in The Land of the Free.

All nations have their blind spots (look at our class system) but is the US somewhere that, along with tolerating questionable attitudes to guns and capital punishment, will still, in the words of a college student from Minnesota, “elect a rapist before a woman” to its highest office?

The dominant behaviour here is surely self-interest. So many prominent leaders are grotesquely pursuing their personal ambitions. Without concern for factual accuracy or societal impact. They tell lies, over-promise, invoke the Almighty, spread fear and division, and generally target the lizard brains of their followers.

And if we see figureheads prioritising themselves over their wider responsibilities, why wouldn’t we copy them?

In India I was struck by Prime Minister Modi’s undermining of religious tolerance, a tenet (with a few murderous exceptions) of the constitution. His goal is Hindu nationalism, the foundation of his power base. Another example of self-aggrandisement and appealing to the lowest form of humanity.

On 11/11 itself, I listened to Today’s Thought for the Day, from bishop James Jones. He spoke, on a day for remembering, of how little the past features in our lives. So much has changed, including the replacement of the truth with my truth.

And not much evidence of the call of duty, so readily cited by combatants in the Great War. Immanuel Kant described duty as the capacity to subject ourselves to a universal moral law that we obey regardless of consequences.

Our personal rights are fundamental. But without, in the bishop’s words, “the more noble call of duty”, society crumbles.