Harvard-trained psychologist Aaron James summed up the Donald Trump archetype with great acuity in a recent book with an unprintable title. Trump exemplified a social type in which the hoax and the bully achieved a “toxic blend”, ready with professions of undying friendship for the credulous, but quick to impugn the sanity of those less trusting of his bluster. It was the type that would “lie without batting an eye” and when called out, declare himself “truthful to a fault”. Confronted with contrary information, he would “shrug and repeat the fib”. He could change the subject, but “never change the lie”.

Trump showed off those traits with unabashed regularity through his presidential election campaign, yet remained in the race and pulled off an improbable triumph. Every campaign appearance was a wild farrago of lies and malignant barbs. And even if every falsehood was called out, the torrent just kept gushing, finally reducing the opposition to stupefied silence.

Global shock at Trump’s win was transformed through a shambolic power transition into a sense of deepening dread. The president-elect more than fulfilled expectations of how a narcissist and bully would handle a public role. In historical perspective though, Trump’s first week in office would be remembered for nothing more malign than an official admission — through a senior aide’s witless statement — that he lived in a world of “alternative facts”. A casual willingness to cause harm in the ostensible cause of a larger good was always evident, but it seemed that the web of systemic checks was strong enough to prevent real damage.

The travel ban imposed on nationals of seven countries with predominantly Muslim populations changed all that. The day Trump made his announcement, US commandos carried out a hit in Yemen, one of the entries on the banned list. The operation killed 15 alleged al-Qaeda terrorists, though eyewitnesses gave a fuller story of at least 10 women and children being among 30 killed.

Iraq and Syria also feature on the Trump hit-list and provide interesting contrasts. In one of these, the US is fighting alongside the regime against the principal enemy, the Islamic State militia. In the other, the US is insistent on finishing a regime fighting the same enemy. In one of these, the US has effected regime change and seeded chaos. The other is where the US has failed to effect regime change yet successfully seeded chaos.

Here, writ large is the tendency to lie and move on. Trump’s executive order, soon enough branded a “Muslim ban”, triggered mass convulsions. Iraq’s parliament resolved, invoking an honoured diplomatic principle of reciprocity, to expel all US nationals from Iraqi territory. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, invested with powers by a constitution authored under US tutelage, quashed that resolution, though he will likely squander what remains of his political capital in maintaining that posture.

Syria presumably will have little difficulty coping with Trump’s world order, since the US embassy in Damascus was shut down in 2012 after the ambassador was caught rendering material assistance to the Islamic insurgency. Trump, indeed, seems willing to surrender Syria to the safekeeping of Russia, provided there are reciprocal benefits available for some of his business cronies in oil and real estate.

Iraq and Syria will survive, but key here is how the US system of governance will withstand Trump’s stress test. Within days of his immigration ban, over a thousand permanent staff at the US state department signed a petition arguing that it served no security purpose, while violating basic constitutional values and damaging US interests.

A more dramatic act of conscience came from Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama appointee who held the post in an interim arrangement till Trump’s nominee gained Senate approval. Without the required clarity about the legality of the President’s executive order, Yates wrote in a mail, which triggered her summary dismissal, that all department of justice attorneys were advised not to defend the travel ban in any judicial forum.

Turbulence within the established machinery of government is one way that Trump gets a pass on other troubles, such as his flagrant refusal to turn the page on a shady business past, which he proclaims can coexist with his newly assumed public role.

There are few bets on how far the system will tolerate the invasion of established procedures by a disordered personality, who projects his narcissistic insecurities as priorities requiring urgent attention. There is a lot of smart money flowing into an impeachment, perhaps within six months.

At the summit level, British PM Theresa May was an apt choice for Trump’s first meeting. Comparisons were inevitable with the infamous Reagan-Thatcher tandem that crafted the neo-liberal world order in the ’80s. Yet if that was tragedy, Trump’s tandem with May clearly is farce. May is sunk in the delusion of crafting a world order beyond Europe, where the UK will be an engine of free trade. Trump seeks little else than compliance with his every whim. Today free trade, tomorrow its opposite; today a border wall with Mexico paying for its own incarceration, tomorrow a punitive duty on Mexican exports to the US.

In the disordered rant of his inauguration address, Trump invoked the imagery of an “American carnage”, that he vowed would end at that very time and place. That may well be the wrong prognosis. Perhaps it is just beginning. And a bewildered world could well be asking when, if at all, it will end.

Sukumar Muralidharan is an independent writer and researcher based in Delhi NCR

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