Hegel viewed history as consisting of stages punctuated by times of upheaval. He assigned to what he called “world-historical individuals” a special role in spurring the transition from one era to another. These individuals didn’t necessarily grasp the full import of what they were doing, and their actions, while transformative, didn’t necessarily result in the outcomes they intended. Trump, I have come to believe, is exactly such an individual: He is speeding the transition from one historical era to another. The ultimate results are very unlikely to line up with his exact ideological aims, but they will be profound. And the world is never going back to what it was.
I've already heard historians come back around to great man theory, completely thrown off by Trump. That's a mistake. We are absolutely living through history. But it's accidental.
The historical analog people reach for for Trump is, of course, Hitler. And this is not to say that Trump contains any bit more morality than that comparison, but the more apt one, I think, is Napoleon. For all of the reasons the author says, and more. Napoleon was petulant, prone to tantrums, relentlessly insecure, a very public cuckold but also blind in his ambition, unrelenting in his grab for power and allied himself with contemporary strong man. If that doesn’t sound familiar enough, consider that they have both gone at the pope. What comes next is going to be different than what came before, and that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be good. But we need to reckon with that sooner rather than later.