But what’s up with Mr. Assange, who seems equally comfortable being a hero of the American left as he is being one of the American right, or even of Russian Putinists? What does he want, anyway?

The answer has been in front of us all along. And the current imbroglio over Russia, WikiLeaks and their role in Mr. Trump’s victory — or, more to the point, Hillary Clinton’s loss — might be viewed as the realization of the vision Mr. Assange had when he started WikiLeaks over a decade ago.

Mr. Assange spelled it out in prescient terms in an essay he posted online in November of 2006, the year of WikiLeaks’ founding.

He wrote it long before becoming the polarizing figure he is today, a “cypherpunk” folk hero with an outsize reputation for being messianic, impetuous and all too cavalier with the personal data that come his way. (He’s currently living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he was granted asylum from Swedish authorities who are investigating a rape accusation against him that he says is false and politically motivated.)

Yet even his toughest critics acknowledge how clearly he saw the politically disruptive potential of technology, back when some of us were getting our first BlackBerries.