IT'S been yet another terrible weeks for politics with a distinct feeling that we are on a downward trajectory to a much crueller and more intolerant world.
And I say that after years of cruelty and western intervention that has cost millions of innocent lives in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen among others.
All of a sudden our own little devolved government's hissy fit seems less important, when watching the actions of the new American president.
I wonder how those living in the lead up to atrocities perpetrated by earlier generations would have felt had they been translated into this social media age.
The isolation and persecution, the religious intolerance that we associate with the Second World War, how would that have ended had people reacted differently?
Would the access to instant information have encouraged people to rise up quicker against fascism or would the 'alternative facts' that have flourish on Twitter still have allowed for propaganda or justified genocide?
I'm heartened by the protests in America, a bad week for politics but a good week for sign makers, some of whom have excelled themselves in their hard hitting messages or humorous put downs scrawled on cardboard.
We, by virtue of the technological world we now live in, get to watch this 'people's uprising' instantly as it unfolds, on our TVs, computers and phones, but will that alter the outcome?
Then there are those loyal to President Trump who point out that he's simply doing what he was elected to do.
That the executive order temporarily banning entry into the United States for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees fleeing wars - in some cases funded and exacerbated by decades of disastrous American foreign policy - was all in his manifesto pledges.
Maybe we're all so used to politicians making outlandish promises during election time that they've no real intention of keeping. Perhaps that partly accounts for the shock at what Trump is now doing.
Did anyone really think he would ban Muslims from entering America?
His own government officials didn't appear prepared for his radical, renegade policy making.
The New York Times reported that General John Kelly, secretary of homeland security - that's US homeland security and not a North Down loyalist flute band - had been on the phone seeking guidance from the White House, which had not asked his department for a legal review of the order, when halfway into the briefing, someone on the call looked up at a television in his office to see the president signing the executive order they were still discussing.
I have a feeling that'll be the template for the Trump administration, act first and think about the legalities later.
I could preach about how his actions will alienate and radicalise a new generation of young men and women, angry at the treatment of them and their families for how they chose to pray.
I could but I won't because I shouldn't have to, it goes without saying. We already, on a much smaller scale, have our own template for such actions and the inevitable reaction to them. It was called internment and resulted in swelling the ranks of a then fledgling Provisional IRA.
If only one good thing comes from this week's Stateside fascism, hopefully it'll mean the armchair politicos and commentators who have continually told us that Trump's not that bad and Hillary would have been a worse president will hold their tongue.
You'd be embarrassed to be still peddling that line at this stage, and this is only week one.
It's hard to see how anyone else could have made a worse president, or could have planned to so disastrously alter the world our children will inherit.
Amid all the division, intolerance and racism of this week one woman of power and influence stood head and shoulders above the rest, a woman who rather than save her own career said 'not on my watch'.
Acting attorney general Sally Yates ordered justice department lawyers not to defend Trump's immigration order saying as long as she was in charge "the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order.”
Trump sacked her in a one line letter, a reaction she must have known was inevitable. I admire her principle over self stance, and it gives hope that there are still people willing to say "not in my name" whether they be at an airport protesting with a sign or the most senior lawyer in America.
