After four years of being in power, numerous books and retrospectives about his life, the character and nature of our President are becoming clearer. His actions and words are not those of an ordinary man. The extracts from his niece's book illuminate the reasons for his lack of empathy. She describes his pleasure from causing other people pain and his belief that money and its acquisition are the only values by which to measure human life. His child-like need for attention paints a sad picture of a deeply flawed human being who has accepted lying as a tool to undermine anyone who opposes him. For him, there would seem to be only the law the economic jungle, eat or be eaten. That's how his father raised him and the doctrine he required of his son.

Donald Trump needs our sympathy even though he revels inciting anger and division. He lives his life as he plays golf – poorly and unhappily because he can only win by cheating. He must know that. We know that rewards and satisfaction never come from the material but from self-sacrifice in the pursuit of defending moral values that are held dear and sustain the lives of those around us. Sadly not all the golden toilets in the world can ever transform Donald Trump into man he thinks he would like to be and how he would like people to see him. A prettier wife, a bigger plane, a more magnificent house do not ultimately bring happiness. Children are always unpredictable. Like Tantalus in the underworld, Donald Trump is constantly moving towards the fruit but it is always out of his grasp. He wants to be loved but cannot love.

The absolute fealty and slavish loyalty he requires from those he puts into positions of power reduce them to shameful apologists, clinging to a little bit of fame before being whisked through the revolving door of The White House. Nobody dares tell the Emperor he has no clothes. Where there ought to be glory, pride, achievement, recognition, congratulations, there is only shame, appeasement, equivocation and moral equivalency. And there are the silences, the shrug of the shoulders, and the sound of that revolving door spinning consistently. As Albany says in Shakespeare's King Lear, a play about an old man who is forced to understand the illusion of power:

"Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile; Filths savour but themselves..."

This pandemic is killing so many across this country, snuffing out their breath like so many candles. We mourn our dead as we pass them to the grave. We wait for the next number and hope it is not us. But the man who leads us shows not an inkling of responsibility, sheds not one tear or utters one regret for the suffering and the loss. He has no shame. 126,000 souls to date have perished and he expresses no words of comfort for the grieving. It is probably good that he has no faith or belief in an after life because the sounds of the cries of all those souls haunting him into his eternal damnation would be too much for a religious man to endure.

How do we move on? With courage and a belief that our system of government will hold, that virtue not vice will prevail. Perhaps we needed a wake up call to point us in a new, better direction. Isn't it also true that you get what you deserve? Time to take stock, re-evaluate, point the ship of state in a different direction, patch the holes in the hull, put some new sails up. Head into the wind. This is after all, The United States of America, a country of hope.