As with so much in the disturbing political drama, House of Cards, Francis Underwood's committee-room soliloquy, initially strained credulity, before being overtaken by the bizarre developments of contemporary reality. Trumped by Trump.

The advent of America's 45th President is the antithesis of "reason" - the triumph of anger over sense, a feckless lunge for non-leadership. Despite hopes that this was merely temporary madness, there are now more worrying signs.

Trump's dissembling in the wake of the murderous rage by violent armed Nazis and segregationists has further legitimised dark undercurrents of hatred and division in American society. His faux balance is no neutrality at all but rather a colossal failure of moral leadership just as his country and the world required it most.

In Australia, the Turnbull government cheapens the term "treachery" by using it to discredit efforts to uncover an MP's New Zealand citizenship.

Yet Trump stares dumbly into the face of the real thing, fanatical male hatred gathered under the same Nazi and race-hate symbols against which his country surrendered more blood and treasure than most. And what does he see? Some "good people"? His political base?

For him, the primary enemy is not domestic terrorists furious at the defeat of slavery, or intent on reprising the racist atrocities that led to the Holocaust, but rather, the fake news media.

Between this moral abandonment, and the seedy despots who hold sway in the other main power nodes globally - think Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un - the portents of a fractious breakdown of the post-war global order grow.

No outstanding leader

Retiring journalistic lodestar Laurie Oakes used his final cross to the morning news on Thursday to describe Trump as "mad" and to bemoan the vacuum. "We really need good political leaders and that's why it's so sad that we haven't got any".

Bob Hawke complained there was no outstanding leader anywhere in the democratic world - including here.

"This is the first time since the end of the Second World War, so we're not talking some peculiarly Australian factors, this is a more global thing," he said on Wednesday.

There is some irony in Hawke overlooking Germany's colossus, Angela Merkel.

As Trump disrespects America's "Greatest Generation" which sacrificed all to defeat fascism, it is left to the leader of Germany, the epicentre of those unspeakable crimes, to stand most clearly against any repeat.

"It is racist, far-right violence and clear, forceful action must be taken against it, regardless of where in the world it happens," she said following the Charlottesville attack.

Even the two most recent Republican presidents, George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush, could not stay their tongues against Trump's disgrace: "America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms".

Where does Australia stand? It's a question Malcolm Turnbull is yet to articulate. Hopefully being "joined at the hip" on defence doesn't require being sewn at the lip on the most fundamental human values.