Recent "No Kings" rallies have the virtue of clarity. The slogan told you what was being rejected. It said less about how to understand the thing being rejected or how it had come to feel plausible in the first place. Which is where the question returns: Does Donald Trump want to be king?

"King" comes with baggage: intention, design, a theory of power. It suggests a plan. Trump, though, has never been much for finish lines. He lives in the moment, chasing whatever advantage is up for grabs now or just out of sight. He doesn't build systems; he finds those already running and figures out how to work the levers.

He wants power, wants to win. He'd rather not end up in court. He wants attention--preferably the kind where he's the sun and everyone else is orbiting.

This is what happens when we shrink history down to a single personality. The camera zooms in, and suddenly institutions, incentives, the machinery of habit and custom fade into the background. You end up with a close-up when what you really need is a map.

Historians who have worked on the Third Reich argue that the private thoughts of Adolf Hitler do not explain the system that formed around him. Ian Kershaw described Hitler as an "unperson," whose identity fused almost entirely with the role he occupied. The task, Kershaw argued,........

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