I will make, blushing, a confession of my own in a moment.

But first I explain that my mind is tuned to this theme as we all wonder what must be going through the minds of those Americans who with their zeal and their votes helped rocket Donald Trump into the White House. Surely he has proven to be such a vulgar buffoon that all those who once adored him must now be muttering to themselves variations on the theme “Good God! Whatever possessed me?”

It is not the best analogy but I know (and here comes my promised confession) that I am always muttering to myself “Good God! Whatever possessed me?” when I remember what high hopes I had of Mark Latham.

Today, wild and somewhere to the political right of Zed Seselja and even of the Yarralumla Residents Association, he is now even as we speak performing robocalls for One Nation.

But once upon a time, becoming in December 2003 a dashing young leader of the Labor Party, he struck immature me as a saviour of weak and wobbly Labor. Pinko fools like me are always looking for someone, anyone to save Labor.

At the time, deluded, one loved the socialist-sounding Labor contrast he offered to Kim Beazley (the man he defeated to become Labor leader in 2003), always the conservative Hot Air Balloon of Australian Politics.

But one shudders, now, to think what kind of prime minister he would have been if we had got the PM, Latham, we then wished for.

But a better Australia-US analogy is to ask if today any once dyed-in-the wool Liberal voters feel horror and shame over any of the policies of John Howard, a man they once worshipped. Did any of them gasp “Oh God! What have I done? Will I ever forgive myself?” when notable Howard atrocities (such as the “children overboard” lies and the committing of us to the USA’s mad invasion of Iraq) unfolded in all their slimy nastiness?

Meanwhile US pollsters and political scientists are detecting few blushes on the cheeks of Trump’s doting “core” of supporters.

And what a chunky core it is. For example a despairing American Prospect magazine moans this week that over 50 million Americans cheerfully receive his daily tweets and believe every word in them even though, American Prospect fumes, every Trump tweet is “brimming with lies”.

There seem to be good, only-in-the-USA reasons why some Trump supporters continue to adore him. For example pollsters fancy that nothing Trump could have done in Helsinki had any power to upset his “core” because those folk couldn’t care less about foreign policy matters and don’t know what a Helsinki is. But quite how the core forgives and ignores his “women – grab them by the pussy” misogyny and his offences against most of the Ten Commandments is a greater mystery.

Perhaps, when one has worshipped someone as awful as Donald Trump or John Howard there is a psychologically unacceptable loss of face that is impossibly hard for core supporters to face up to. Thank goodness, the Mark Latham I worshipped never, quite becoming PM, my coredom was never tested, my most crimson blushes were spared.

As well as our statuesque good looks and fanatical love of soccer football SBS football commentator Lucy Zelic and this columnist have something else in common.

Ms Zelic has been famously and newsworthily savaged for fully and correctly pronouncing words (especially players’ names and exotic placenames) while covering the World Cup.

Like her I am rather good at long and difficult words, and note that the Zelic controversy has come in the context of an Australia now so dumb that words of three syllables and more seem to present a daunting intellectual challenge to almost everybody.

For example foreign minister Julie Bishop is one of those who can’t manage every syllable of “terrorist”. She has to shrink it to “terrist”.

No one in public life can manage every syllable of “particularly” and now, inventing an intriguing new word for which we really must find good uses, instead says “partickly”.

In recent days none of the many people in the media who have tried to say “anaesthetist” (the Aussie hero of the Thai cave rescue is an anaesthetist) have managed to tame that polysyllabic monster and pronounce all of its miscellaneous bits and pieces.

In recent days Labor leader Bill Shorten has made brave attempts at the long, long word “temporarily”. But the closest he has come (though it is an attractive word in its own right, suggestive of a new kind of pasta or of the latest model of Alfa Romeo) is a syllable-shortened “temporelli”.

Maligned Lucy Zelic wouldn’t have any problems with long Russian names but not many ABC Classic FM presenters these days can climb the Everest of fully, properly pronouncing the name “Tchaikovsky”. For them he becomes mystery man Shy Kossky.

Not that I have tickets on myself for being good at pronouncing every syllable in a word. In dumb 21st century Australia it is a skill as redundant and useless as unicorn-whispering.