Towards midnight, the thousands crammed into the Wells Fargo Arena in Philadelphia broke out the flags. Thousands of stars and stripes: hand-held paper ones; large cloth ones flowing in the hot night air. Chelsea Clinton came out in a red dress, to introduce her mother Hillary, who came out in a white pantsuit. At the end, Bill would join them in a blue suit. When Hillary's comprehensive but unexciting speech had finished, the entire crowd turned over handheld placards – red, white or blue – and the auditorium became a giant flag as red, white and blue balloons came down.

The psychodrama of the 2016 election is pitting the tortured liberal class against the spectre that haunts them. When liberals expose themselves as wracked by Trump’s vulgarity and concerned about ‘the discourse’, he is all too happy to feed these anxieties. Trump is nothing if not a master of politics as libidinal warfare.

Kanye West’s speech at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards was lengthy, meandering and scattered, at best. At times he was humble, particularly as he stumbled through an expression of nuanced regret over his infamous interruption of Taylor Swift. Invariably, however, he swung back to the heightened dignity that he is so well-known and oft criticised for. There were glimpses of profundity, though often followed by the address ‘bro!’ perhaps scuttling the likelihood of some viewers to take his comments seriously. Despite, or perhaps because of all this, I don’t think anyone saw that bombshell coming.