Nothing against the mentally ill per se, you understand. Most of us suffer psychological problems at one time or another, if not permanently. In fact there’s a compelling case to be made for the proposition that in some ways the entire human race is insane.

Thus we have to be as tolerant and understanding of each others’ irrationalities, inanities and insanities as possible. But such tolerance also has to be kept within bounds.

And to me the most definite bounds are as far as possible from positions of power.

This is, of course, as readers with their wits about them will quickly realise, a somewhat paradoxical proposition, in light of the fact that power-seeking is itself often a symptom of monomania, megalomania, kleptomania or even full-blown messiahmania.

As evidenced most vividly by the madman that the loony-tunes minority in the US have visited on themselves, their fellow citizens and the rest of the world, Donald Trump...