Many children of my generation grew up watching and reading tales of superheroes in improbably post-apocalyptic scenarios, saving the day as they go along with their lives. The superhero's only reason to exist in this universe is to take on the super villains who, without fail, are always comically evil, and hell bent on hatching some nefarious plan to take over the world.
While enthralling in their storytelling, such fantasy fiction is always grotesque from the outset and requires a great deal of suspension of belief on the viewers' side, to actually make it work. It is a work of fiction after all...
Or is it?! Yup, who would have said? In 2025, we have come to this most unbelievable of situations, where we can no longer distinguish between a dystopian landscape in an imagined future where machines have started to take over the world, and the political class is made up of greedy power-hungry billionaires, (together with their even wealthier billionaire friends), who are only motivated by self-advancement, and fiction.
The world news have been nothing but unbelievable recently, as I am sure most of us have been caught double-taking a news item on our phones more than once in the past two or so weeks.
It took the new President of the United States only a fortnight to declare an unnecessary trade war with his neighbours and strongest, closest economic allies Canada and Mexico, declare his intention to invade Greenland, suggest Canda should become the 51st state of the USA, rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of the USA, pull out of the Paris Climate treaty, pull out of the WHO (but then reconsider - phew), and now, howler of all howlers, say that the US will take over the Gaza Strip, get rid of the war damage, displace all or most Palestinians and rebuild the whole place into the Gaza Riviera.
How in God's green earth did we get to this point?
How did the leader of the most powerful and greatest democracy in the world become a bad caricature of the worst written super villain in comics world? More significantly, how did he get democratically elected to be the most powerful man in the world?
There are a few lessons to be learnt from last November's election in the US, and how Mr Trump regained power, in the face of a perfect storm. Let's not forget that the man faced two impeachments, countless accusations of wrongdoing, legal proceedings on multiple cases, some of which dating back to before his political career - and yet, the man marched on and managed to obtain unparalleled popularity and ultimately electoral success.
The fact that he is surrounded by an army of spineless people who are unwilling to call out the emperor's sartorial choices and are only seeing the opportunity to personally advance by jumping onto the crazy train, does not help.
But what the Commander in Chief does so effectively is stretch the window of incredulity, to places we could have never imagined it could get to. In fact, he has made an art of it.
In order to obtain the unobtainable, he makes outlandish claims that exceed our imagination, in veritably pure super villain fashion. This normalises the slightly less crazy, but still definitely crazy thing he would have wanted in the first place and makes it really easy for him to get it. He has done this many times during his first tenure as President, and it is evident that he will continue to operate in this manner in his second.
Populism remains his one and only key to popularity. With the rise of the extreme right, he is not ashamed to pander to the most despicable aspects of human nature. What till a few years ago was common consensus about right and wrong is now open for discussion, as long as it benefits us personally.
Though I cannot say that I was surprised that Mr President would hit the ground running with his unbelievable antics, I must admit that I wasn't expecting all this extent - however it all makes sense, and I have a sneaky suspicion that we need to buckle up because it's going to be one bumpy ride.
Forget normality, this is all uncharted territory now.
Alexander Mangion is Deputy Mayor of Attard