First time happenstance; Second time coincidence....

There were three election shockers in 2016.

Actually there were more than three but for the purpose of this post, there were three: Brexit. Trump. and Duterte of the Philippines.

Trump and Duterte are brothers from different mothers. Their personalities & the tone of their rhetoric are very similar. They promise different things and disagree on several key points (notably regarding religion) but essentially they are different versions of the same politician.

One of these things is not like the other....

UK leadership elections are hard to control. Too many moving parts. Way too many votes. That's why pre-election polling in the UK is generally awful. A referendum vote is much more straight forward. It is yes/no. The UK voted "yes"....and Boris Johnson was named FM...which by itself is shocking. OTOH Johnson is very much Russia's kind of leader. Bombastic, nationalistic, and (by reputation) incompetent. High chance of him becoming the next PM.

My point?

We know that Russia influenced the US election.  Some of the same fingerprints can be found on the Brexit referendum.  I don't know a lot about the Philippines but as the title implies that's one country too many.

But why?

Russia doesn't have the chops to return to their super-power status. They're too far north; too sparsely populated; too recently removed from their Soviet past. But they want it anyway.  So instead of building Russia up, Putin is tearing down his competition.

The good news: The rhetoric being pumped out is too extreme for the mainstream.  Sooner or later it will be rejected.

on cats...

Watching live feeds of cats has made me realize: Cats -- feral cats in particular -- have language.

They trill, growl, chirp, hiss, spit and purr. These things have meaning. They also have use body language. I'm not saying cats are capable of discussing philosophy but they *do* communicate. Give them another four million years and they might even be the dominant species on the planet.

Why 4 million? That's about how long it took for hominoids to go from tree swingers to tool users.

What will happen to humans? Heck if I know. Maybe we will be enslaved by the cats.

We are post Alaric

Before the election I drafted a set of predictions over how I thought the transition would go. They were pretty general but also accurate (America holds its breath but the transition is peaceful).

So I'd like to share my predictions for how I see Trump's presidency playing out. Like my transition predictions these are general in nature but I can see it playing out in one of four ways:

A) The Invisible Hand of Fate provides Trump an outlet for his aggression outside of the country. The Rally's Around The Flag and for a time Trump is seen as the Churchill of the 21st century. Unfortunately I think he will eventually prove himself to be America's Hitler with devastating consequences.

B) The Invisible Hand provides an outlet within the country (think: Orlando Nightclub 2.0) leading to a dirty war (where a country's government wages war against its own citizens) aimed at Americans in general but Muslims in particular.

C) Without an internal or external outlet the Trump Administration will founder on the rocks of Congressional Gridlock.

D) Law of Unintended Consequences reigns supreme. In this scenario, Trump manages to stumble across success again and again. America has needed a shake up for a good long while. I'm not happy about Trump being the one to do the shaking but it isn't impossible that he will luck into success. Under this scenario he gets elected to a second term. However, I can not - NOT - see him being successful for eight years. Sooner or later he will take a fall.