I was listening to the British historian David Starkey on the subject of Henry VIII about whom, says Starkey, “he is the only monarch of England whom everyone can remember by his shape”.
Professor David Starkey refers to the English Reformation as England’s first Brexit, in as much as England departed the Roman Catholic space, dominated by the Hapsburgs, and found its modern self in the political construction of “the King in Parliament”. The Reformation led to the discovery and assertion of national sovereignty.
Now I do not wish to exaggerate the similarity, but I am persuaded that our Dear Leader Trump is despised and hated by the political elite because he is leading the United States into its own Brexit, a Brexit of a psychic kind. It is withdrawing the people from the power of the opinion elites, whether in the United States or Europe, who stand in relation to the contemporary public as the Roman Church stood in relation to the lay-people at the time of the Reformation. This relationship was of the dominator to the dominated.
Politics has been replaced by credal beliefs. Error is no longer tolerable because dissent is heresy. David Starkey is well worth listening to, and I do not intend to try to improve him by summarizing.