Donald Trump has dragged American political campaigning to its nadir with his hate-mongering and outrageous insults, and the President of the Philippines recently insulted the President of the United States with a crude epithet.

The Hungarian demagogue Victor Orban is destabilising the European Union with his anti-refugee rhetoric (while forgetting that in 1956 many Hungarians were refugees themselves).

Bashar al-Assad and Russian diplomats lie through their teeth – and get away with it. When I witness these events – as well as the bombing of funerals and hospitals – I recall the words of the Irish poet W.B. Yeats:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”