ALWAYS BET ON THE DEEP STATE:

The ordinary, anonymous Americans who constitute the three grand juries which, to date, have charged or are expected to charge a vulgar simpleton who was cloaked in enormous power as president - have heeded Franklin's call to keep their republic intact.

They are doing their part in corralling an unrepentant scoundrel who yearns to exercise the privileges and prerogatives of an omnipotent monarch.

This is an essential act of citizenship that has required enlightened Americans to reject - sometimes at great risk and usually with little fanfare - the sinister designs of a demagogue who prefers autocracy to democracy.

So was the defiance of largely anonymous Capitol police officers, motivated no doubt, in part, by the imperative to preserve, protect and defend the US Constitution. They stood their ground despite being outnumbered, overwhelmed and hurt in body, mind and spirit.

They prevailed.

Rather than wallow in disappointment, forlorn liberal writers ought to applaud the resolve of honourable Americans who have held a dishonourable president to stiff account. They have acted as a bulwark - as Franklin envisioned - against a "populist" charlatan intent on extinguishing the republic in his obsessive pursuit of money, power and vengeance.

The delicious irony is that, ultimately, Trump's fate will be decided by the kind of everyday, anonymous Americans he detests and to whom he would deny membership at his gilded monument to kitsch and extravagance, Mar-a-Lago.

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