The world’s liberal democracies suffered a major defeat this week. Its autocracies have chalked up a major win.

Illiberal populist demagogues have for the past few years scored a series of outright victories, or, at least significant advances in the world’s democracies—Hungary, Israel, Georgia, Slovakia, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Sweden…. They have all swung their political barometers towards the far right.

And now, the biggest prize, the United States, has been secured by an angry misogynistic, racist, iconoclastic, divisive, narcissistic, nationalistic, vindictive, authoritarian, mercurial, dishonest, lying, corrupt convicted felon.

The impact of the re-election of Donald J. Trump will have a resounding impact on the world. It has already left a deep and damaging impression on America’s moral standing in the world.

In 1630, as the ship Arabella crossed the Atlantic towards the struggling Massachusetts Bay Colony, future colonial leader John Winthrop gave a sermon in which he expressed the hope that the colony would become a “Shining City on the Hill”—ie a moral example to the rest of the world.

That is how America has projected itself since before independence in 1776.  In reality manna has too often triumphed over morality. But through the centuries Americans have fervently clung to their shining self-image and many others around the world have bought into it—until now.

Americans are angry. On the domestic front they are angry at an amorphous “deep state” which has failed to deliver the perpetual prosperity they have come to expect. They are angry at the rest of the world for what they see as exploiting their better nature.

Americans are also scared. They are scared of losing their jobs to low-paid illegal immigrants. They are even more scared of losing their cultural identity. And on the international front, they are scared of being knocked off their plinth by the Chinese.

So Americans have elected an angry man who has successfully tapped into a rich political vein of fear. He will do well out of it. For a start, Donald J. Trump has avoided prison and will now undoubtedly use the presidency to augment his several billions.

But the rest of America not so well. In their Faustian Pact, Americans have discarded their moral compass and opted instead for an America First policy backed by transactional diplomacy. Donald Trump has made it clear that the days of American altruism are over. What you will see shining on the hill will be reflections off golden domes. In the future America will help only those that help America—usually with hard cash.

The dangers of a Trump second term should have been clear from his first term when he withdrew from the Paris Climate Change Accord, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Open Skies Treaty, the INF Treaty, the Iran-Nuclear Accord and two international migration agreements. He also threatened NATO, virtually destroyed the World Trade Organisation and heaped praise on the world’s autocratic rulers.

In his four years out of office he has promised—if re-elected—to withdraw from the Paris Climate Change Accord (again); deport 11 million (or is it 20 million?) illegal immigrants; finish his wall on the southern border; attack Mexican cartels with missiles; withdraw from NATO; impose tariffs; stop aid to Ukraine and put “America First” in any future dealings with the rest of the world.

He will also replace a highly skilled civil service with Trump loyalists; weaponise the Department of Justice, FBI and CIA to attack his political opponents; remove the independence of the Federal Reserve; mobilise the military to round up illegal immigrants and put them in detention camps before deporting them; take away the licenses of broadcasters who attack him; jail journalists and pardon “patriots” involved in the January 6 riots.

For most Americans the two big issues were immigration and Inflation in the first part of the Biden Administrations. Those who voted Trump earnestly believe that the president-elect will substantially stop the flood of illegal immigrants across the southern border and usher in a new era of economic prosperity.

On the first point, they are almost certainly right. But it will be at a cost in both financial and moral terms. As for the economic measures, independent economists believe that Trump’s policies will led to inflation that will be higher and last longer than anything experienced under the Democrats.

But of greater importance is that to introduce his policies, Trump will have to ride roughshod over the US constitution and the rule of law. Support verging on reverence for the law has until now been the cornerstone on which rested Winthrop’s “Shining City on the Hill.” The law, the shine and America’s positive role in the world are set to become a thing of the past.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".