As an American of mixed Danish and Indian heritage, who is also a citizen of France and, therefore, of the EU, Donald Trump’s contempt for the rule of law fills me with dread. “I don’t need international law,” he boasted on 7 January in an interview with the New York Times. For Louis XIV, it was “L’état, c’est moi”. For Trump, it’s the “Donroe doctrine”, or “the western hemisphere is mine for whatever profit I and my elite group of loyal courtiers can wring from it”.

At the same time, Trump’s honesty about his intention to use the astonishing military power he wields for unfettered plunder is at least refreshing. No more American pieties to democracy and human rights. The world hasn’t seen this kind of unabashed dedication to amassing wealth since the British East India Company. All hail the new king emperor! Or else.

As an American, I am horrified by the lethal violence unleashed by ICE thugs across the US, even if, on my Danish-American mother’s side, I am descended from the “right” kind of immigrants, according to Trump: white, Protestant northern Europeans. By a twist of history involving the 1911 utopian Danish settlement of Solvang in California, I have a slew of cousins in Denmark. I keenly feel their anguish at what is happening with Greenland. They are good, kind people who can’t understand why the US is now turning against one of its most loyal allies.

As a citizen and resident of France, I feel like standing up and singing the Marseillaise with tears in my eyes, as in the famous scene of defiance in Casablanca, only this time it’s to protest against American fascism, not the Nazis. Do my neighbours in a little village south of Paris think l’américaine is an internal enemy? Neighbours who, just a year and a half ago,........

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