DONALD Trump’s inauguration is unparalleled in US history. Trump is a modern-day American Caligula.

Raised in the dominant class, Caligula elatedly scorned it, sometimes with gory zest.

When he was sick and a toady pledged he would do battle in the gladiatorial arena if the deities returned Caligula to a heathier condition, the emperor swiftly forced him to fight.

An added indignation was when senators were made to run beside the imperial chariot in the hot sun, dressed in togas for miles.

Suetonius’s chronicle shows someone not dissimilar to Trump in being thin-skinned: when two Consuls overlooked the announcement of his birthday, an incensed Caligula had them fired and he vacated Rome for three days.

Historian Tom Holland says, Caligula would later on inform the Senate that they would honour him “whether they liked it or not.”

Dissent risked death as Caligula was convinced the masses would back him so long as they were entertained.

More than $100 million is being spent on the festivity of the new president’s installation. No quantity of money can dispel the disgusting reek that pervades every aspect of this inauguration.

Nor can the fake orchestration of public festivities conceal the widespread sense that the country, with the installation of the new administration, has embarked on a path that will lead to a disaster of unimaginable dimensions.

History has caught up with American capitalism.

The protracted process of economic and social decay has been covered over for decades with democratic phrases that served to disguise the gap between the official political myths and the underlying reality.

But the mask has now come off. Donald Trump personifies the corruption, ruthlessness, parasitism and essentially fascistic mind-set of the capitalist oligarchs who control the United States.

Trump will lead a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

Joining the billionaires in Trump’s cabinet and White House staff are retired generals, tapped for the key national security positions, and ultra-right ideologues appointed to oversee programs and social services that they have devoted their political efforts to destroying.

Alan Hinnrichs, Dundee

MR Obama ought to be wondering what his legacy might be.

Will it be Obamacare? No, do not resuscitate will likely be its fate. Guantanamo? No, it’s still operational. Maybe repealing the Patriot Act? No, this president had signed its renewal.

What about the removal of Gaddafi? Libya is in the throes of sectarian civil war, and has become the main thoroughfare for those African emigrates, who are determined to enter bankrupt Europe and couldn’t care less about doing so by the proper and legal means available to them.

What about Syria? He sided with and armed the rebels who turned out to be Daesh and its affiliates.

As the first mixed-race President of the United States he recklessly indulged in race-baiting which had helped to worsen US race relations, perhaps for a generation.

So I think other than improving his golfing average (more golf trips than any president while in office) his legacy will be President Donald J Trump.

James Andrew Mills, Renfrewshire

IF the British Government find it difficult to negotiate with our, still, European partners,how do they expect successful negotiations with the predators of corporate America? Liam Fox,Michael Gove and Boris Johnstone have all waxed lyrical at the wonderful trade deals promised by Trump. It appears we are at the front of the queue to be savaged by American “Big Business”.

These corporations have every intention of dismantling our civil, human and workers’ rights: they will destroy our welfare state and privatise our NHS, as surely as they intend to destroy Obamacare in their own country.

So thank you England for Brexit. You have got your country back – keep it.

Terry Keegans, Beith

ON Thursday evening my wife and I watched Question Time from Peterborough. Inevitably the discussion turned to Donald Trump and the broadcaster Piers Morgan commented that the President Elect was “half British”.

Had Trump’s mother been born in Peterborough or anywhere else south of the border he would of course have been described as ‘half English’.

What is it about the English that they cannot come to terms with Scottish nationality and nationhood? I first came across this sort of thing lightyears ago at school when we were discussing Shakespeare’s Richard II and the famous quotation from one of the characters ‘this sceptred isle – this blessed plot, this England.’ Could someone please once again remind our suthron neighbours that they are not alone on this island?

Alan Clayton, Strachur, Argyll

MEBBE we shuid aw stairt cryin him The Trump insteid o his preferrit The Donald. This fae the Oxford Englishh Dictionary online.

Trump: 1, slang or vulgar. The act of breaking wind audibly; or 3, A thing of small value, a trifle; goods of small value, trumpery.

Stuart McHardy

--------------------------------------------------

THE article by Kirsteen Paterson (Number of homeless young Scots rises ... The National, January 18) was shocking on two fronts. Firstly that the number is so high and rising, and secondly that the comments quoted in the article were so useless.

The headline number was that there were 5,751 homeless young Scots. The number of people employed in the public sector in Scotland is around 542,200. Turnover of staff in the Public Sector varies by region, and by employment sector.

So instead of saying: “We are doing everything we can”, or “the fact that homelessness still exists, and in such large numbers, is a national disgrace”, let’s say that those who control the public sector in Scotland, ie the Scottish Government, Scottish Local Authorities, and the UK Government, should require that one per cent of Scottish public sector vacancies are reserved for homeless young people.

This would make a significant impact on them by providing employment and income, and mark out Scotland as a country, not of rhetoric around social justice and a fairer society, but of action that makes a difference.

Professor Alan M Boyter, Cairndow, Argyll