American democratic experiment still works despite Trumpian assault

MORE than two months since the controversial US presidential election, Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States on Wednesday as he tries to rekindle the "shining city on the hill" of American democracy after the most restive transition since the Civil War.

More often than not in the last four years, Donald Trump's presidency felt like one of those train-wreck reality TV shows that could never be cancelled because its tawdriness gripped so many viewers.

But the Trump show has been cancelled - both at the ballot box in November; and, after his incitement of a violent mob in Washington on Jan 6 to overturn that result, cancelled on Twitter.