We inhabit an era when angry men, in the political arena, are often around us. In these past many days, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have given us all, yet once more, reason to think that in our times as also in the past, angry politicians have often played havoc with the norms of democratic politics.
Johnson, fully aware that an inquiry by the parliamentary privileges committee would result in his suspension from Britain's House of Commons, resigned his membership of the legislative body in a huff.
He went as far as to say that the committee inquiring into his record was a kangaroo court, that its investigations of his conduct as prime minister during the coronavirus pandemic were a witch hunt.
Partygate would have felled Johnson in any case, before he took the plunge. And then there has been the uproar over the honours list he prepared before leaving office. Eight of the names on the list have been struck down by the committee empowered to study and vet the recommendations.
Boris Johnson did not stop there. He demanded, at a meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, that his honours list be upheld. It was a suggestion Sunak would not, indeed for ethical reasons, could not keep. Sunak made that clear in public. An irate Johnson then went on to describe the prime minister's comments as rubbish.
It was that rare instance in modern British history when a former prime minister was not averse to demonstrating his political animus against one of his successors in public. Rarely has there been an instance of a British politician, to say nothing of one who has been prime minister, losing his cool and not regretting it.
Johnson is not happy that he was driven out of Downing Street over all that scandal centering around parties during Covid-19 on his watch. And then came a few brief, nearly shining moments, and that was when Liz Truss was shown the door, when Johnson thought he could reclaim his old office. He rushed back from a holiday, intending to throw his hat into the ring.
And then he saw the surge in support for Sunak. He decided not to enter the ring. But that he has never been reconciled to the loss of power is an image he has not been able to shed.
Or perhaps not willing to shed. Boris Johnson, for many in Britain and, remarkably, in his Conservative Party, now belongs in the past. He has brought all of this on himself.
Johnson is angry. And so is that other western politician, or pretender to politics, named Donald Trump. In all this time since he lost the White House to Joe Biden, Trump has not lost his exceptional ability to be graceless and undignified.
In office, he was impeached twice. In the recent past, he has been indicted twice, the second time for placing America's security into danger by having his home in Florida -- its rooms, bathrooms, hallrooms and toilets -- converted into a dumping ground for highly classified documents.
Those documents should have passed into the possession of the Department of Justice the moment his presidency came to an end in January 2021. Departing presidents do not take such documents with them when they walk away from power. These documents belong to the state and are not the personal property of a president, serving or lapsed.
But Trump had no qualms about keeping these documents in his possession. This was criminal conduct, as the DOJ has let it be known. But none of that bothers Trump, whose capacity to spew falsehood has gone up by leaps and bounds.
Additionally, feeling not a bit embarrassed about his conduct, he has gone on to insult his presidential successor, the Justice Department and Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Still angry that his efforts to have the election results of 2020 overturned in his favour did not succeed, Trump has made it known with a vengeance that he will seek the Republican nomination for the presidency again.
It has not occurred to him and to his rabid followers that a man accused of criminal conduct and sexual misdemeanour ought not to seek high office again. He believes that all those Republicans who have declared their plans of seeking the White House will wither away and that he will have a rematch with Joe Biden.
Angry men in politics all too often tear the fabric of social decency apart. When men like Trump and Johnson go around scowling in their campaign to convince people that they are right and everyone else is wrong, they do those people grave wrong. Politics is never about anger but about an ability on the part of individuals to interact with one another in the national interest.
Politicians losing power are expected to be dignified in defeat. Sadly, dignity and grace in defeat have never been part of the Johnson and Trump vocabulary.
Both men have undermined the liberalism in thought and action which has traditionally underscored democratic politics in the West. Both men have consistently found truth to be inconvenient. The truth has heightened their irascible natures.
It will take quite a while for politics in Britain and the United States to be pulled back from the brink and restored to its original state of being. But that might be asking for the moon, at least for now.
When women like Nadine Dorries continue to root for Boris Johnson and when men like Jim Jordan keep peddling Trump's lies, one realizes the grave damage populism has done to the art of governance in countries which have generally been regarded by the rest of the world as symbolic of democratic accountability.
Angry men in politics sooner or later dwindle into being demagogues before their people. They have little, in terms of ideas, to offer. They have an abundance of bluster with which they work up their followers, swiftly turning them into mobs.
It is a rule with angry politicians that they consciously and endlessly seek power, which is fine. The trouble arises when they either refuse to part with power or to walk away when the ground has shifted from under their feet.
And when they are compelled to walk away, it is bitterness which is their accompaniment, a sense of misplaced hurt they carry for a long time, perhaps for the rest of their lives.
They do not apologize for their behaviour, for it does not occur to them that they were wrong to do what they did. In their own eyes, they are always the victims. The world is their tormentor.
Not much long ago, an American politician tarred the corridors of power with his criminal acts. He went on lying about his role in the scandal swirling around him and did all he could to hang on to office, until the water came over his head.
He then decided to give it all up. He lived for 20 years after he left office, but not once did he express contrition for his acts.
The scandal was Watergate. The American politician was Richard Milhous Nixon.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.