There's a link from Donald Trump's downfall to Nancy Pelosi's ham-fisted trip to Taiwan

The short answer is that both are symptoms of a crisis in American belief - internally and in the minds of its enemies.

While spectacular, the Mar-a-Lago raid should surprise no one given the cynical populist's contempt for norms, and his seditious efforts to overturn an election.

"FBI searched for nuclear documents" proclaimed the splash-headline of the Washington Post amid fears "top secret" papers could "fall into the wrong hands".

Yet the furious Republican anger directed not at a treasonous Trump but at the Department of Justice and the FBI, speaks to a moral pathology - a structural fracture right at the heart of the American project.

Implicitly, it is assumed that if a liberal democracy was genuinely imperilled, its bedrock and impartial institutions would provide the automatic stabilisers, and that people of good conscience across the spectrum would unite over shared civic values, a joint national purpose and simple decency.

But is this right? There are few relevant pointers for this coarse digital age where information struggles against "alternative facts", incivility is endemic, and where inchoate hatreds are packaged up by populists like junk bonds and sold back to gullible voters.

Historical cases such as Weimar Republic Germany between the wars, had their own circumstances like national humiliation and catastrophic economic excesses which tilled the ground for Fascist demagoguery.

But there are still parallels. German military and civic elites in the early 1930s judged the shouty little man with the toothbrush moustache, far too vulgar to ever amount to much.

It is possible that America is already in this degenerative phase, marked on one side by cosmopolitan impotence and on the other, by a cult-like devotion that is not only impervious to reason, but enraged by it.

The party of Abraham Lincoln has abandoned the American idyll opting instead for demagoguery, its violent right-wing membership somehow finding yet more belief with every new crime uncovered.

In a sign that it is more of a cult than political party, news of Trump's theft of official secrets was instantly read as further evidence of the "deep state" conspiracy against him.

American nationhood is now bitterly contested. The very notion of crime has lost its moral weight.

Impartiality is dead. All is politics, from the courts to the police.

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Recall that Trump won the presidency in 2016 against a vastly more qualified Democrat he branded "crooked Hillary" over some private emails?

Since then he has breached every standard of decency and probity, been impeached twice, fomented an insurrection, and now faces multiple criminal investigations.

Republican senator for Wyoming, Liz Cheney may be GOP royalty but her participation in the January 6 hearings has brought death threats, branding as a "traitor", and likely defeat in the primaries this week. This for upholding the constitution and the rule of law.

Courageously, the daughter of former vice-president, Dick Cheney, told her fellow representatives as the hearings commenced, "I say this to my Republican colleagues ... there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonour will remain".

It was water off a duck's back.

Even Trump's gormless vice-president Mike Pence, whom the rioters wanted to hang, believes the FBI is on a political witch hunt.

That the triumphant hegemon of the 20th century is collapsing, is clear. What was less appreciated was how its decline would be hastened from within as Americans forsake democracy for tribalism.

Equally clear is that China is coming with increasing speed and a menacing new clarity in both word and deed.

It is now likely that Taiwan will shortly join besieged Ukraine as polities invaded by powerful neighbours. How do we know? Because China keeps telling us. "Use your imagination" quipped its envoy to Australia, Xiao Qian, when asked on Wednesday how Beijing would re-incorporate democratic Taiwan.

Some strategic analysts say Ukraine's plucky defiance will have given President Xi Jinping pause for thought.

Dr Charles Miller of the ANU's School of Politics and International Relations, told me on Democracy Sausage midweek that Xi's forces face not only a "hedgehog" defence of (mainly) American supplied missiles and other weaponry, but also the added burden of having to cross the Taiwan Strait.

Such complexity, presumably, means a degree of rehearsal, training and testing would be required.

Conveniently, the Biden administration was on hand to provide the pretext for such war-gaming and associated territorial incursions with a highly provocative, but otherwise useless visit to Taipei by House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Her ill-judged trip and Beijing's reaction to it, had it all. Vapid American gesturing, theatrical Chinese preciousness, and all the risks of miscalculation these things bring.

The Thucydides Trap is often cited to predict the tensions that inevitably arise when a dominant power is met by an emerging one. The "trap" suggests war in such circumstances can be hard to avoid.

What is often left off, is that the greatest danger lies in the mutual calculation that actual war is not in either side's interests. Thus, messaging becomes excessively bellicose. Diplomacy slides.

Pelosi's visit, which has accelerated the timetable for cross-strait conflict, could pose enormous deleterious implications for Australia. Australian exports to China would cease in such an event. That means iron ore, coal, other commodities.

Was Australia consulted about this unilateral change to the status quo? Some friend.