We used to laugh at Ugandan despot Idi Amin. We knew some of the things he was doing were terrible. We knew he tortured and killed. I can remember a rumour going around our South African convent school that nuns were being killed in Uganda because people were muddling up the worlds missionary and mercenary.

He was an evil man. The thing is, he was also very funny. You could even by an LP (long-playing record for those below a certain age) of his speeches and they were hilarious. Can you think of any similarities today?

I don’t know what the satirists in the USA are going to do if Donald Trump is not re-elected because he has given them so much fodder for mirth.

He speaks like a bragging six-year-old. He can’t spell, he can’t pronounce and, to all intents and purposes, he is as bright as a six-year-old (with apologies to those children already brighter than him).

We have been horrified at some of his actions.

There was little to laugh about when we saw children being kept in cages and away from their parents in what had an eerie similarity to some kind of concentration camp.

For those who look only inwards, Trump is fantastic. Never mind that the global economy is in recovery, it is Trump that has done it for the USA.

Never mind every bit of evidence of the climate change crisis, it is Trump who is keeping the coal mines open.

Never mind the racist rhetoric, it is Trump who is making America great again.

And never mind that he has sleazy affairs and mixes with equally sleazy people, Donald Trump kowtows to the right-wing Christian lobby. If he is the man who is bringing God back to America it’s not the God I know!

All this is happening and yet he makes us laugh. He speaks in superlatives all the time – again, like that boastful six-year-old. He is the smartest. His ideas are the best and, by the way, if you disagree you are likely to be sacked.

We have all laughed... but we’re not laughing now.

I honestly believe that this is the man who is going to plunge the world into a war the scale of which we have never seen before.

He has pulled out of the Iran agreement, against all advice, with the consequences we have already seen. Then, last week, he declared that the US was pulling out of Syria. This was announced in a tweet in the early hours. I can just imagine him trying to think of a way to distract people from the impeachment investigation and this was the way to do it.

He has abandoned the Kurdish people who have been our staunchest allies in the fight against Isis/Daesh. Within 12 hours Turkey was bombing them.

By the time Trump is finished, we won’t need to worry about Brexit or trade agreements. We’ll be more worried about the resurrection of Isis.

We laughed at Amin, we laughed at Trump. But who is laughing now?