For more than a decade, political observers have been trying to put Donald Trump in a neat box to explain him — and to contain him. This has not worked. To his followers, Trump is a great man of history . He is a role model, prophet and genius who breaks the rules and wins anyway. To his opponents, he is a fascist. He is a “dotard,” corrupt and an existential threat to American democracy. The evidence strongly favors the second view. But neither fully explains the president or his MAGA movement. Donald Trump is best understood as a chaos agent. Chaos is the unifying theme of his political project — and his life. His main political strategy has been to “flood the zone” and deploy a “shock and awe” onslaught against democracy, the rule of law and any sense of normalcy. Like other authoritarian leaders, Trump uses chaos as a weapon to confuse the public and the opposition, break institutions, and consolidate and expand power.…