Donald Trump has transformed the American story | Osita Nwanevu

A decade ago, it was easy to believe US identity was a settled question. Now, as our institutions acquiesce to barbarism, the US's promise has been traded for chaos

Making America great again was never a promise Donald Trump could deliver on, nor one that he intended to. That said, he has undoubtedly thrust the US back into history - and not just through his assault, in recent days, on the global economic order.

About 50 years ago, the tumults of the late 1960s and early 1970s began giving way to a quietude that would carry us through the end of the cold war. Tested as we may have been by conflict, scandals and crises economic and not, we entered this new century - and met the uncertainties of a new world we'd forced into being - surer of ourselves than ever before. The towers fell, yes, but the US's sense of purpose was as much of a settled fact in the world as American power. The American people were divided, true, but for all but an impertinent and implacable few, the major questions of American identity had been resolved. The meaning of American values, the contents of the American dream, the members, in good standing, of American society - these things were known and known so deeply, we supposed, that they hardly needed articulation.