There are times when events occur that are grim but must be borne, and this American election seems one of those times. Last night, before going up to bed, I did a last-minute check with the BBC online and it had already posted something that seemed so improbable that I just assumed they were indulging in some journalistic scatter-braining. After all, for days before the election, I read time and again the major networks and media prognostications that the race would be close for the presidential choice, but in the end sanity would prevail. Respected, authoritative pundits were giving their serious points of view that Trump would surely lose to the almost-equally-unpalatable Clinton.

Donald J. Trump, at a rally last month, summoned a tidal wave of support from whites feeling displaced by economic changes. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times

And because I was exposed so frequently in the last several days to those assurances, I gave the BBC declaration that Trump was pulling ahead short shrift, and went up to bed, becalmed by the understanding that it would soon be over, the American nightmare of selecting the arguably most powerful, influential person on the planet for another four years. My husband expressed more than a little skepticism; he had been listening to a roundtable discussion featuring his favourite U.S. political pundits, Marks and Shields whose opinions, dissenting at times, but always reasonably arrived at, he trusted.

Early this morning, while it was still dark out, an indecent hour to be awakened, my husband nudged me awake. He could no longer keep the reality of the conclusion to himself, as he had throughout the night, and wanted to share with me the knowledge that the new president of the United States of America already had his name emblazoned on glitzy architectural showpieces eponymously named, a man whose crude and bigoted, misogynistic and privileged opinions he has trumpeted throughout an admittedly nasty campaign.

It took a bit for that news to settle in to my consciousness, since it seemed like a bit of inappropriate levity in very, very bad taste. But there it is, Ladies and Gentlemen, the American electorate, disgusted with the calibre and direction of its elected legislators and the currently-administering political party has wrenched itself into an entirely other direction, in the process creating a hugely polarized social order of ill will and viral dissatisfaction with the status quo.

The international community with some notable exceptions (think China, North Korea, Russia, Philippines, Egypt, Turkey, etc. -- Iran being an exception whom the president-elect has sworn to disinvest of its hard-won nuclear agreement whose threat to world stability is on par with North Korea's) is quailing and quivering with anticipatory resignation. Should this gaudily thuggish showman manage to follow through on even a few of  his threats, the U.S. will revert to a sullen isolationism, thwarted trade agreements, hostility toward non-Americans (on the positive side, the Muslim Brotherhood), while trumpeting its exceptionalism as the world's sole superpower returned to its traditional status. A wielder of a massive nuclear store of weapons, newly unafraid to threaten their use.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Republican presidential elect Donald Trump gives his victory speech at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York on November 9, 2016 (AFP/Getty Images)