I went to Florida to see Disney World. What I found looked like a dying country

I’ve always sensed a whiff of sadness in Florida, perhaps because so many people go there to die. Although not us, obviously, because we went for Disney World. Still, terminality is in the air. In Mafia films, Florida is always, literally, the last resort: the place the wheezing hood heads after he’s failed in the Bronx and Vegas and is now unwittingly destined for a one-way trip on a fishing boat.

Somehow, I reckon, they’re feeling the same mystical embalming lure as those Jewish New York retirees who come to trundle their last-ever mobility scooters into their last-ever condominiums. One day, this dangling American dogleg will fall into the sea under the weight of their coastal apartment blocks, as the whole damn country opts to end its days in the sun. Go south, and by the time you’re bouncing over the narrow archipelago towards the Keys where Ernest Hemingway perhaps first thought of shooting himself in the face, it is hard to escape the sensation that America itself is running out of road.

I was there last week and so was Donald Trump, although we did not hook up. He was in Mar-a-Lago, his resort on Palm Beach, where he met the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. That evening, as the pair chillaxed on the terrace, paying guests got to watch them react in real time to news of a North Korean missile launch. One, a retired investor who joined the club three months ago, posted pictures on Facebook. It used to cost $100,000 to join Mar-a-Lago, but since January the fee has doubled. Trump is expected there this weekend, for the third weekend on the trot. So I suppose, if you have $200,000 and an inclination to meet the 45th President of the United States, that’s where you go.