Reading the papers today, everything is ‘Trump’. It’s difficult to get away from him; even Prince Harry (in Britain) and the Epstein files can’t compete. I imagine he’s loving this – even the bad publicity he generates, however much he complains of it; you’ll know how he revels in large numbers, often exaggerated, for example of attendees at his inaugurations, TV viewing figures for his shows, and probably facebook ‘likes’. If only for this reason he’s likely to dominate the accounts of our present times in the history books my successors will write, becoming one of the ‘great men’ of world history, and in all probability with an ‘Age’ named after him. For liberals it must be excruciating, for such a flawed and undeserving personality to set his mark so indelibly on events. Most of us will resile at the idea of Trump being put in the same distinguished category as Lincoln, Churchill, Napoleon and even Thatcher, in the books our children will read.

People are asking – on an LBC phone-in programme this morning, for example – why this is so. Why is it that this deeply flawed character should dominate American and world politics just now, as he clearly does? For those of us historians who – as I’ve said before – are uncomfortable with the old idea of history’s being led by ‘great’ – or at least remarkable – ‘men’ (and a few women); and who further resile against the idea of idiots taking on this role, our whole intellectual world seems to be falling apart. It makes history appear more accidental than we would like to think; dependent on individuals – what used to be called ‘heroes’ – arising to guide or change events, rather than significant ‘underlying causes’. And if we are democrats we should believe that individuals shouldn’t have this kind of power over events in any case, with institutions like parliaments, congresses, elections, separation of powers, the rule of law and ordinary human decency restraining individual excesses. As of course they are failing to do in Trump’s case; which is one reason for America’s problems currently. (The American Constitution could do with a few more ‘Amendments’ when all this is over.)

But there’s more to it than this: an interpretation that could perhaps reconcile the ‘great man theory’ with more general and impersonal explanations of historical events. It’s easy to see Trump’s policies arising from his personal views, and even his character weaknesses, with narcissism being the ‘weakness’ that is usually cited, followed by ignorance, stupidity, disregard of the truth, and sociopathy. But what lies behind this? Looking back into his early biography, we find a ghastly crooked property-developer father, an absent mother, problematical siblings, education at a military school instead of college, a louche teen-age life (‘grab them by their pussies’), immersion in the least respectable field of capitalism, a well-attested habit of lying, and a long history of bankruptcies, all this protected by his family wealth, and by Russian private or state bankers; leaving him able to ‘win’ in life in spite of being a ‘loser’ morally. These weren’t just personal failings, it seems to me, but societal ones: typical perhaps of a certain class in America at this time – the one described in Ayn Rand’s novels – whose whole ‘Art of the Deal’ was founded on cheating, propaganda, and ‘gamesmanship’. ‘Facts’, for example, were only valuable to Trump insofar as they were useful, and so could be manipulated to suit his aims. He could well genuinely believe his own egregious lies, which will make it easier for him to utter them. ‘Facts’ are simply tools in the great game of life; which Trump has proved himself adept at.

The Chicago Professor John Paul Rollert has written that Trump sees capitalism not as an economic system but ‘as a morality play’, whose rules supersede every other ethical system, and so should govern all aspects of life. Which is what for me links him to the rise of capitalism; one of those ‘underlying causes’ that historians like me prefer to see at the root of things, and the latest stages of which he could be said to exemplify. Brought up with no other moral compass than the ‘laws’ of capitalist accumulation, he perfectly represents the ‘stage’ that American capitalism has reached today. So we don’t need his oddities and idiocies to make the ‘Age of Trump’ just a blip in the course of history. They’re part of the essential fabric; explicable in general as well as in individual and exceptional terms. Trumpism is what you get when you allow capitalism to dominate your society, and to pursue its natural path unhindered.

If you doubt his madness, incidentally, replay the speech he gave to the World Economic Forum in Davos today; essentially a recycled political campaign speech, with all his customary boasting, stupidity and lies. I imagine his audience – of leading business people and politicians – saw through it. But with the power he’s wielding just now, they probably won’t like to say.