In today’s America, national embarrassment is the only constant. Instability is ever-present – from the inexperience of the executive, through the dysfunctional legislature and to the broken politics of localities nationwide. And yet each finds a unique way to add to the national shame, a new indictment of the American system as one of the most primitive in the developed Western world. Yet another example of America’s national failures comes from the top, with the shameful display given by President Donald Trump over the allegations propagated in the newly released White House confidential, Fire and Fury.

Any normal, rational, sane politician would not stoop to address such salacious claims, particularly from an author with a somewhat checkered past, as has Fire and Fury’s author, Michael Wolff. Perpetually the political neophyte, Trump went on the attack. What might have been dismissed as a poorly sourced and informed money-grubbing scheme turned into the political event of the year so far, as the president once again demonstrated his relentless determination to thrust himself and his administration deeper into the gutter.

In a decidedly unpresidential moment (as if acting “presidential” still required an ounce of decorum), the administration attempted to suppress the title by means of impeding its then imminent publication. The strategy so pursued would ultimately create an effect antinomical to the stated aims of the executive, vis-a-vis the publication of said reportorial work. Fire and Fury would be released early, to immediate commercial success on the back of the presidential animus, selling out within hours of its release. All this served only to anger the resident of the illustrious address at the corner of Pennsylvania and 16th. Soon, the president would take to Twitter, once again to enthrall a third of the populace and terrify the rest, claiming in this instance to be “a stable genius,” as if the need to brag in an elementary way about one’s intelligence signified a higher degree of mental aptitude.

It is shameful that our national discourse has been so debased that such an utterance would come from the supposed leader of the free world. Quotations of the same ilk have become commonplace in America, and the poisoned nature of our political nature is slowly infecting the rest of the world. America still remains the center of the collapse in standards of public discourse. It is a national embarrassment, a country-wide shame. Or, at least, it should be. We have become too accustomed to the debasement of public life – and we must regain a sense of decency – to clear the constant stench of national shame raised by America’s dysfunctional politics.