Why so many people voted for that charmless fraud is a question that will exercise historians for decades.

To so many of us, Trump was a nightmare president. Narcissistic to an extraordinary degree, petty, nasty, uninterested in the world or the wider concerns of humanity, uninterested in solving any problems other than his own, dangerously tempestuous, and a profound bully who valued abject obeisance over truth. What we saw was an authoritarian who explicitly wanted an end to American democracy, to be replaced by one-man rule: a fascist dictatorship in effect. Despite all this, nearly 70 million people preferred him to the alternative. Without a massive democratic counter-vote, he would have won a second presidency. That would have been disastrous.

70 million Americans. Is it that those people are avowed racists? Some, but surely not all of them. Is it that they are all deprived working class people? Almost certainly not. In fact, his vote seemed to transcend many of the traditional categories, with plenty of Latinos voting for him, women, urbanites, suburbanites, and younger people too. Almost everywhere in America – rich and poor, there was a substantial Trump vote. On many levels, this was a very scary and disturbing election.

The best and most common explanation I’ve seen is “He told them what they want to hear”. I believe a whole lot of people were convinced by a particular narrative: that their lives and livelihoods were under threat, and to stop it they needed a monster on their side. This way of thinking put them in the centre of this story, making them out to be the most put upon, most maligned people in America, with others out to take what they had away from them.

A whole media universe was in place – 24×7 – to tell them how great they were; particularly if they had earned a bit of money, owned their own house, educated their kids, and put away savings for their retirement. Now a nasty socialist government was coming to tax them hard, take away their prized possessions, and laugh at them in the process. Tax money would be given to the undeserving poor to fund their drugs habits and there were so many rich urban elitists who were there to ridicule them, dictate to them and possibly control them through undefined means. To survive, they needed to go to battle. The general they chose seemed like the right fit: exceptionally pugnacious and unwilling to leave anything on the floor, except blood.

This narrative, while compelling, is absent of one crucial ingredient: hope. Should the vision be realised, it would only lead to more division, more anger, more nihilism, and more hatred. It’s the vision of a grubby medieval state at best. At worst, it leads to concentration camps.

To fight the rot, the narrative will need to be fought, and fought hard. There are better narratives available- ones that ask people to work together to confront the considerable problems facing America and the wider world. Ones that don’t think zero sum and instead think about building a better world that raises all boats. Ones that help the younger generations to come together with new ideas for a world-leading society. Ones that engage with friends rather than seeing everyone as mortal enemies.

Combating the narrative will require lots of hard work at government and grassroots level, where local leaders, activists and workers can feel invested in the future. It’s not just ad campaigns and messaging. Big and bold new projects may be required – on the level of the 1960’s Space Programme or greater – to get Americans working together again. Whatever they are, they need to be inclusive and defined, and not grand outsourcing projects passed to crony monopolists and fulfilled in distant lands. It is time to be bold.

Trump’s presence on the world stage caused many to dive deeply into a very dark narrative. With new hope in the air and a new president, perhaps people can start to move away from such an entrenched, hopeless position. Bold, inclusive projects that create hope and dispel the cynicism seem to be an obvious way the narrative can be changed.