Donald Trump has won the US election. After serving as the 45th president between 2017 and 2021, he will now be the 47th. Trump has not merely defeated but trounced his opponent Kamala Harris. She was crushed so badly, she even failed to address her supporters at the traditional election party and instead – there’s really no nicer word for it – slunk away.

Claiming his victory, meanwhile, Trump told his voters that they – and he, of course – had “made history.” He is very likely to be right about that.

While rhetoric about “the most important election in our lifetime” has been badly overused for campaigning purposes, in this case, Trump’s second victory really is special. The fact that he is the first president since the 1880s to win a second term after being out of office is the least of it. Such trivia will make for good game-show questions. But what turns the return of the Donald – as he used to be called semi-affectionately when still generally mistaken for a buffoon – into a historic event is that it is occurring at a very peculiar moment.

We are witnessing the decline and fall of, at least, American supremacy, and, possibly, of the American polity as we know it. At the same time, a multipolar world order is emerging. It is against that background of historic change that we have to understand the Trump Phenomenon.

And a capital-'P' Phenomenon it is. That much is beyond doubt. Full disclosure: I have almost no sympathy for Trump’s politics; and since I am a socialist, he would be very unlikely to have any for mine. But whoever is still in denial about the fact that the uncouth and stubborn real-estate billionaire and former reality TV star is a natural-born politician of outstanding savvy is a fool. That gift makes Trump neither good nor bad; it simply means that his impact will continue to be massive.

Regarding the past, we may have gotten a little too used to Trump already and find it hard to recall just how sensational his trajectory has been. As a reminder, a very brief summary: Since 2011, he has broken into the US political system from the margins, imposing himself on its traditional elites. He has catalyzed the transformation of that system and those elites, not only but especially of its (very) right-wing section, the Republican Party, into his personal domain.

He has held one presidency for a full term – as many predicted he would not – against enormous media and deep-state resistance (including the mass idiocy of Russia Rage/”Russiagate”). And now “the twice-impeached semi-pariah” of 2021 has staged a formidable comeback against even more of the same, this time featuring a combination of assassination attempts and total lawfare, including felony convictions that turned out not to matter (except they helped him fire up his base and donors).

You neither have to like nor admire the man to register the plain fact that the above is the imprint of very unusual political talent because no one is just that lucky.

And all the signs are that Trump is far from done. Because, make no mistake, he has not run for the presidency again merely to take his revenge for being defeated in 2020 and harassed ever after. He is a textbook narcissist, and the sheer pleasure of showing them all certainly matters to him. But, still, it is........

© RT.com