It's easy for US citizens to think their situation is unique, but when we step back and look at the wider world we see a global phenomenon. Trump and the neofascist Republican Party are merely the USA's symptoms of a much wider malaise. Thanks to the Internet and a mass media that thrives on sensationalism, populism has swept the globe in recent years. Everywhere we look, we see cynical demagogues feeling infantile soundbites to adoring simple-minded voters whose limited intellectual capacity renders them helpless in the face of the onslaught.

This is why we have Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orban in Hungary, Babis in the Czech Republic, Erdogan in Turkey, the dominance of PiS in Poland, and... frankly, far too many examples of populist triumph to enumerate here.

Our civilization is coming to an end because we have failed to realize that representative democracy is catastrophically unfit for purpose in a complex modern inter-connected world. Representative democracy disenfranchises the intelligent & knowledgeable (there's no one to vote for) and empowers the ignorant and foolish. In such a world, Trumps and Brexits etc. are inevitable.

We must hope that after the long years of tyranny that are rapidly approaching, a few people standing amid the ruins say, "let's not do that again" and create far more adequate ways to achieve desirable outcomes.

But until then, there's no escaping the Trumps of this world. Our system guarantees their triumph.