It was a sight for sore eyes. At least if you’re not the one giving the speech at an event, only to walk in and discover the organisers easily outnumber the audience. In an anonymous, windowless room in Washington DC, there were just a handful of people seated around a couple of circular tables for the latest session hosted by the rightwing – and conspiracy theory adjacent – US thinktank, the Heritage Foundation. Let’s hope there were rather more watching online.

This is Liz Truss’s safe space. America, her last refuge. A nation that regards her 49-day tenure as prime minister a badge of honour rather than a sign of failure. In the UK, no one wants to know Liz any more. The Tory party just wish she would crawl under a stone. She’s the source of much of their embarrassment. Nor could her former constituents wait to see the back of her. Her loss was Norfolk’s gain. But in the US, she still has some credibility among the far right. She still matters.

Now, you have to think carefully before writing about the Trusster these days. You don’t want to be seen to be doing anything that might possibly be seen to encourage her. She would rather be talked about than not. Even if what is said is not that flattering. Her conscious state always hovers around the flat-line. So there’s always the danger of indulging her narcissism.

But against this, it feels wrong to ignore her entirely. Much as you would like to, you cannot entirely air-brush Truss out of history. Hers is a lesson to us all. The failure’s failure.

No one has ever before crashed and burned so quickly. Nor has someone with so few obvious talents ever been so over-promoted. And that’s a crowded market place. So she has become an object of fascination. One whose story we need to see to a conclusion. Slowly fading from relevance until she’s just an unfamiliar face at the Cenotaph commemorations. So I write with caution about someone who appears to be beyond treatment. Even her shrink has given up on her.

Liz is in the final stages of a tour to promote her book, Ten Years to Save the West. Make that nine-and-a-half years, as the book – the ramblings of a five-year-old on acid – was published in April and, after a week of laughter, was almost totally ignored. Certainly by the voters at the July election. Fair to say the UK’s idea of saving the west was very different to Truss’s.

But even the losers get lucky some time. Liz is a protected species in some circles. No matter what she says or does, she can do no wrong. And the Heritage Foundation is her very own echo chamber. Where various “alt-right” hardliners and deadbeats congregate to promote each other’s ideas. Where Liz can be guaranteed a hearing – if only by a few – along with the kind of fee of which most of us can only dream. There’s money in rightwing Washington circles. It’s just less certain whether anyone is paying much attention.

Truss did not seem that bothered by the poor turnout. Then she seldom does. Possibly she is used to it. She remains one of the few people who can appear totally disconnected from the speech which she is giving. Her voice is flat, her face blank. It’s all rather disconcerting. She might as well be reading out her shopping list. Not starting world war three.

“It’s Thanksgiving,” said Liz. Nearly right. That was last week. “So I would like to start by thanking America for electing President Trump. Can you imagine what US foreign policy and the rest of the world would have looked like if Tump had been in power for the last four years?” Er … As it happens, we could. A march on the Capitol to overturn democracy. Appeasement with Putin. Large parts of Ukraine handed over to Russia.

Liz saw it all very differently. For a libertarian, her prescriptions are very Orwellian. Peace through War. It was all a bit confusing. As if her synapses were only partially connecting. Maybe that’s the best we can expect. As good as it gets for Liz. Iran would never have got near to nuclear capability if we had just been tougher on somebody or other. It didn’t seem to have occurred to her that Russia, China and North Korea might have been willing to help Tehran regardless. And 7 October would never have happened if Trump had been in the White House.

By now we were in full stream of unconsciousness. The west was dying on its feet because of the rise of neo-Marxist philosophies. Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, and Emmanuel Macron were all part of a communist conspiracy. It would be news to them. As it was to us.

Then there were the eco-extremists – AKA people concerned about the climate crisis – and the anti-colonialists. These too were all bad. It was quite deranged. Just a repeat of her pet hates that had never made any sense when she had come up with them the first time. A world that was unrecognisable to everyone apart from the delusional and the paranoid.

Finally: the solution. Israel should be allowed to do anything it liked to Iran. Bomb it. Obliterate it. Use nukes if necessary. Whatever it takes. And if Israel wasn’t up to the task, then the US should step in and do it for them. Economic sanctions. A first strike. Nothing was off-limits. We should also forget about the climate crisis. Stop being wimps and drill, baby, drill. The US. Europe. Everywhere.

This was just the start. The civil service and all bureaucracies should be eliminated. The Blob de-Blobbed. They were all secret Commies. Perhaps we should be nuking them too. This seemed more of a random swipe. Europe had become morally weak. A stain on the world. The international criminal court should be ignored. America should take over the world. It was time for a Judaeo-Christian Nato to take on the Barbarians. The age of appeasement was over. Let the hunger games begin.

Just a smattering of applause could be heard as Liz stopped mid-sentence. Almost as if the audience was in shock. This was too mad even for a thinktank that promoted Donald Trump. If you’re too much for the Heritage Foundation, then your time is probably just about up. We can but hope.

• Taking the Lead by John Crace is published by Little, Brown (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.