The real mystery of Donald Trump, the former US president and now president-elect, is not his personality or even his politics. And neither is it – as many grieving American liberals seem to believe – how Trump, “bombastic, profane, and frequently untruthful” (according to the largely pro-Trump Wall Street Journal), could possibly have amassed so much popular support.

That question is actually very easy to answer: Firstly, he could because the Democrats are just so incredibly awful in every way imaginable, from genocide to alienating elitist snobbism. There was a reason pre-election polls showed that “a majority of Americans believed the US was on the wrong track”; and they were right, even if they may well find out soon that there is more than one way of losing one’s way. And secondly, like it or not, much of America-as-it-really-is recognizes itself in Trump: obsessively individualistic yet deeply conformist, naturally anarchic yet intuitively authoritarian, and, last but not least, violently aggressive yet thin-skinned, too.

In short, the Democrats are turning into outsiders, at least for now, and deservedly so, while Trump vibes with his people, whether he or they deserve that or not. That says more about them than about him, but none of it is terribly complicated; it just takes a certain degree of disillusionment to acknowledge.

Rather, what is puzzling about Trump is that we should know him quite well by now, including from his first presidential term, and yet we don’t. Symptomatically, well-informed American observers hold diametrically opposed views on whether we finally have Trump’s measure or not: International Politics scholar Daniel Drezner stands for those stressing that much about Trump and, in particular, his foreign policy is now “clear,” presenting to us a “much better read than before.” For historian and Stalin expert Stephen Kotkin, though, Trump remains “unpredictable.” The upshot is we simply cannot stop speculating about what the next president will do – or at least try to do – with his second term. Consider that yet another way in which Trump, this intuitively supreme manipulator of his own image and our attention, has a hold on us.

Of course, our curiosity can be forgiven because it also has objective reasons. Whatever Trump may really want and whoever he really is, one thing is certain: He is now backed up by a triumphant comeback with a strong popular mandate. This time, unlike before his first term, he has not only trounced the Democrats in the bizarrely un-representative Electoral College but also won the popular vote, that is, the actual majority of individual ballots nationwide. In addition, with Republican control of the Senate and the House of Representatives now certain, Trump has a so-called “trifecta,” with the presidency and both chambers of Congress in one hand.

As a result, despite the general decline of American power, Trump is now – more so than in his first term – on his way to being one of the less than a handful of men (yes, all men at this point; it’s just a fact) who can plausibly claim to be the most powerful leaders on the planet. If Trump so chooses, he will have the means to exert massive influence on the fate of not just the US but literally humanity, for better or for much worse, which is more likely – not because of Trump’s character but because American power is structurally biased toward being destructive.

That is why we are seeing such intense interest in Trump’s ongoing picks for high positions in his incoming administration. They have included established yet submissive neocons, such as Marco Rubio as state secretary, odd newcomers, such as the TV personality Pete Hegseth for the Defense Department, and loyal veterans of the........

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