Since the U.S. presidential election, I have had to pinch myself occasionally to believe I’m still in the real world. It just gets more and more bizarre. Is the incoming president of the United States really threatening to take a part of Denmark, a friendly nation, a fellow member of NATO to boot, by military force? Is he really threatening to steal the Panama Canal? And, to really bring it home, is he threatening to use economic might to force Canada into becoming the 51st state? Is the president-elect of the U.S. really threatening to end what President Biden has used to justify aiding Ukraine, the rules-based world order?

I pinch myself again, but it doesn’t help. All this truly is part of our new reality. Might is right may now be restored to legitimacy, not by Russia or China, although they are no doubt paying close attention, but by our democratic friend the United States.

Would the felonious president actually carry out any of these threats? Some will say we should not take him too seriously, that it’s all just leverage for future negotiations. He is after all more performer than politician; he can never get enough attention. Or some will simply dismiss his blather as the rantings of a buffoon. He is indeed a buffoon, but buffoons with power must be taken very seriously indeed.

Hitler was a buffoon, but he managed to commit the greatest atrocity in history and destroy most of Europe in the bargain. Perhaps the greatest lesson he taught us was that there are no limits to what men will do if they are sufficiently ruthless and they think they can get away with it. Any limit you might set, or even imagine, is vulnerable.

If someone told you in 1930 that in Germany, one of the world’s most advanced nations, an upstart politician would, or even could, exterminate an entire race of six million people, you would have thought they were insane or having nightmares. But he did just that.

The felonious president may be no Hitler but, according to his former chief of staff, John Kelly, he has said that Der Führer “did some good things” and that he wanted generals like the Nazis. And his threatened land grabs echo ominously of Lebensraum. Kelly also said that his former boss meets the definition of a fascist.

The felonious president, like Hitler, habitually outrages norms, routinely doing and saying things another politician would have lost his career over. Indeed he has outraged the most fundamental norm of democracy, refusing to accept the transfer of power after losing an election. The big lie, and he got away with it.

Also like Hitler, the felonious president has exceptional charisma in front of a crowd. And with fellow Republicans. He has completely captured and transformed the Republican Party, converting one-time critics into fawning acolytes, into Trumpists.

He has not only threatened other countries. He has threatened to use the power of the state to punish his domestic enemies whom he has called “vermin.” He will unleash the military on his favourite scapegoats, immigrants, whom he accuses of “poisoning the blood of our country.” His language tends to veer into the Hitlerian.

So how far will he go? Maybe it’s all bluff and bluster, but we have assumed that before and it was a very big mistake. If he says it, believe it.