Thank you Dan for your always insightful posts. I’ll offer that there is an additional factor that builds and leverages the power of coincidence you so eloquently frame out: The power of promise. I will posit that we have a political class more than ready to leverage the power of coincidence to their advantage - but when this is combined with the power of promise, then the electorate is more than ready to attribute absolute brilliance…or absolute failure to the “leaders” in power.
I close by sharing how I’ve described to others how the Power of Promise in recent political discourse has been framed:
Politicians promise fundamentally only two things - the promise to change things they fundamentally can’t change , and the promise to prevent change that can’t be prevented. Combine that with the power of coincidence … and you have the recipe for living in interesting times.
Thanks again Dan for your insightful reflections. Keep them coming.
Except that Hippo Don is singular in his incompetence, unlike any - any! - of the examples you've mentioned.
There is no hiding stagflation and/or hyper inflation once Hippo Don has placed a sycophant at the head of the FED.
There simply isn't.
Also, there is not only incompetence in play, unlike the likes of Erdogan - Hippo Don never backtracks. Ever.
He'll try to fight chaos with incompetence.
We're dealing with a different beast in Hippo Don. He's a genuine, verifiable low IQ imbecile.
Allow me to explain why I'm utterly convinced of this.
At some point during Trump’s long drumbeat on immigration, he started spouting that: “Other countries are emptying their insane asylums into our country!”
I admit, I wondered why, specifically, he was talking about insane asylums, until it hit me - Trump heard the word ‘asylum seeker’, and he only knew the word ‘asylum’ in the context of ‘insane asylum’.
From there on, his distorted mind simply filled in the blanks, following simple albeit ludicrous logic.
If countries were emptying their insane asylums into our country, they must surely also be emptying their prisons into our country. And so, most if not all of the people crossing our Southern border must be crazy or criminal. And so, if the rest of the world is emptying their insane asylums and prisons into our country, crime must be going up in our country while going down in the rest of the world!
This fantastically absurd fabrication is the result of Trump conflating… seeking 'asylum' with insane 'asylum'.
Injecting bleach?
Trump is mentally incapable of storing basic information, both conceptual and connotational, which is why his vocabulary has always been below that of a fourth-grader. Trump cannot utter a sentence without using simple words like ‘big’, ‘great’, ‘good’, ‘very’ or ‘bad.’
This is the level of Hippo Don's thinking. People still think that Hippo Don can change his mind on the basis of anything resembling logical thought. That won't happen.
The danger is exactly - as opposed to all the examples you gave - that there isn't any deeper thought proces. Hippo Don is not simply 'unpredictable'. The unpredictably is the result of the total absence of any understanding and thinking.
And like I said, once the economic shit hits the fan, he's is the last man on Earth who can fix it. And there is no hiding that...
If your view stacks up then yes, it’s scary, but also suggests we’re in the grip of historical forces which aren’t really so very deliberately alterable, doesn’t it?
I love the general line of your argument. And I must chase up Larry Bartels. But your big 'if' offers comfort. I just don't see AI massively improving productivity without massive unemployment. Much more likely to be another way of screwing Trump supporters. So your piece hasn't made me any more pessimistic regarded Trump's future prospects. The opposite in fact. So thanks for the piece.
Happy that you’re happy. But… it was just an illustration of something outside his control that can redound to his benefit. There are lots more. Look at 2017 to the beginning of 2020 — nothing dramatic but a solid economy got better for reasons that had nothing to do with him. And it was a big reason why many people voted for him in 2024.
Dan, your post reminded me of Fluke, by Brian Klaas. We want to believe simple cause and effect stories, even though we actually have so little control and so much is just a result of many random coincidences. As a result, someone like Trump gets the benefit of the false narratives we create.
Superb post Dan. And very much along the lines of something that has been resonating in my brain cavity for some years, after reading The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman (and his more recent work Storm before the Calm). His thesis was that the US economic-political cycle had reliably been roughly 50 years. With each economic epoch in the US corresponding to an economic crisis and the end of one model and the introduction of the next. The two most recent being the Hoover-Roosevelt transition and the Great Depression and the introduction of the New Deal, and Carter-Reagan transition with Stagflation and Oil Crises and the introduction of Reaganomics. The election of 2028 will be the end of the Reaganomics cycle, if his thesis holds. And if you squint and take a look at the BBB, you can see it is the ultimate caricature of 'trickle down' economics imaginable. Potentially leading to a bond-currency confidence crisis when debt service costs swamp the rest of the federal budget. I've imagined that the Trump is likely this imagined Crisis president, akin to Hoover and Carter. And there will be an economic crisis on the order of Great Depression or Stagflation, leading to a tumultuous several years and then the emergence of a new economic system in the US over roughly a decade. To your point, I believe AI will be the driver of the next era, and even the form of government. All of this leaves aside the 80 year cycle in the solipsistic American view of massive global crises, starting with their 1776 revolution, the 1860s Civil War, and the 1939-1945 World War II. We are now 80 years hence from 1945. I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts on Friedman's take, and whether the current MAGA movement is the end of an era, and not the beginning of a new. Thank you my Canadian friend.
I wouldn’t call it coincidence, exactly (definition: a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection) because there is a cause. It sounds more like ignorance (a lack of knowledge) with a twist of coincidence. So maybe a new phrase: a remarkable concurrence of ignorance.
Had the economy gone south in 1936 FDR still would have won handily. I looked at the election results in 1938, when the economy did go south and Democrats lost 72 seats in the House and 8 seats in the Senate. First of all, Democrats won the total popular vote in that election.
To estimate an electoral vote outcome, I totaled up the electoral votes won by each party in the Senate races. For the rest I looked at the House elections. In most cases the results were lopsided in terms of seats won and I assigned electoral votes to one or the other party on that basis. In a few cases the seats were pretty evenly split. For these I calculated the average popular vote share for the districts won bay each party and assigned the state to the party with the higher average.
The result was 338 for the Dems and 193 for the Republicans. Conclusion, FDR would have won handily.
As for Republicans in 2028, they will lose if Trump is unpopular, by Rule 1. In fact, Trump would have lost in 2020 even if the pandemic had not happened, also by Rule 1. In fact, Trump won in 2024 by Rule 1 though in 2016 he won by Rule 3. Avoiding disasters like Bush II and Trump is why it is so important to have the dispensation.
What's really scary is how many American elections are determined by the price of gasolune which Presidents have almost no control over. Most electorate are just along for the.ride which is why I always get the government someon else deserves - and he's not bright. I think he's wrapped in a straightjacket behind two locked doors until election time when he gets a free pass for the day. PeePee was just edged out by probably the most qualified man to ever run for the office leading a party that delivered MAID, legal pot, dental care, pharma care, a 32 billiin dollar pipeline to tidewater for the long-suffering Alberta. Had Trudeau not generously stepped aside - nothing you'll ever see of the peeman - we'd be all sticky with MMAGA and singing a quite different tune. Rule still applies: No One Ever Lost Money Underestimating The American Public. Double-double for Canada.
Thank you Dan for your always insightful posts. I’ll offer that there is an additional factor that builds and leverages the power of coincidence you so eloquently frame out: The power of promise. I will posit that we have a political class more than ready to leverage the power of coincidence to their advantage - but when this is combined with the power of promise, then the electorate is more than ready to attribute absolute brilliance…or absolute failure to the “leaders” in power.
I close by sharing how I’ve described to others how the Power of Promise in recent political discourse has been framed:
Politicians promise fundamentally only two things - the promise to change things they fundamentally can’t change , and the promise to prevent change that can’t be prevented. Combine that with the power of coincidence … and you have the recipe for living in interesting times.
Thanks again Dan for your insightful reflections. Keep them coming.
Elbows up
Dan
I go along with this line of thinking a long way.
Except that Hippo Don is singular in his incompetence, unlike any - any! - of the examples you've mentioned.
There is no hiding stagflation and/or hyper inflation once Hippo Don has placed a sycophant at the head of the FED.
There simply isn't.
Also, there is not only incompetence in play, unlike the likes of Erdogan - Hippo Don never backtracks. Ever.
He'll try to fight chaos with incompetence.
We're dealing with a different beast in Hippo Don. He's a genuine, verifiable low IQ imbecile.
Allow me to explain why I'm utterly convinced of this.
At some point during Trump’s long drumbeat on immigration, he started spouting that: “Other countries are emptying their insane asylums into our country!”
I admit, I wondered why, specifically, he was talking about insane asylums, until it hit me - Trump heard the word ‘asylum seeker’, and he only knew the word ‘asylum’ in the context of ‘insane asylum’.
From there on, his distorted mind simply filled in the blanks, following simple albeit ludicrous logic.
If countries were emptying their insane asylums into our country, they must surely also be emptying their prisons into our country. And so, most if not all of the people crossing our Southern border must be crazy or criminal. And so, if the rest of the world is emptying their insane asylums and prisons into our country, crime must be going up in our country while going down in the rest of the world!
This fantastically absurd fabrication is the result of Trump conflating… seeking 'asylum' with insane 'asylum'.
Injecting bleach?
Trump is mentally incapable of storing basic information, both conceptual and connotational, which is why his vocabulary has always been below that of a fourth-grader. Trump cannot utter a sentence without using simple words like ‘big’, ‘great’, ‘good’, ‘very’ or ‘bad.’
This is the level of Hippo Don's thinking. People still think that Hippo Don can change his mind on the basis of anything resembling logical thought. That won't happen.
The danger is exactly - as opposed to all the examples you gave - that there isn't any deeper thought proces. Hippo Don is not simply 'unpredictable'. The unpredictably is the result of the total absence of any understanding and thinking.
And like I said, once the economic shit hits the fan, he's is the last man on Earth who can fix it. And there is no hiding that...
Intriguing hypothesis. I don’t know Bartels (where should I start?). It reminds me of https://substack.com/@brianklaas and his book https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fluke/Brian-Klaas/9781668006535
If your view stacks up then yes, it’s scary, but also suggests we’re in the grip of historical forces which aren’t really so very deliberately alterable, doesn’t it?
All the best, John.
I love the general line of your argument. And I must chase up Larry Bartels. But your big 'if' offers comfort. I just don't see AI massively improving productivity without massive unemployment. Much more likely to be another way of screwing Trump supporters. So your piece hasn't made me any more pessimistic regarded Trump's future prospects. The opposite in fact. So thanks for the piece.
Steve Kendrick
Happy that you’re happy. But… it was just an illustration of something outside his control that can redound to his benefit. There are lots more. Look at 2017 to the beginning of 2020 — nothing dramatic but a solid economy got better for reasons that had nothing to do with him. And it was a big reason why many people voted for him in 2024.
Dan, your post reminded me of Fluke, by Brian Klaas. We want to believe simple cause and effect stories, even though we actually have so little control and so much is just a result of many random coincidences. As a result, someone like Trump gets the benefit of the false narratives we create.
Superb post Dan. And very much along the lines of something that has been resonating in my brain cavity for some years, after reading The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman (and his more recent work Storm before the Calm). His thesis was that the US economic-political cycle had reliably been roughly 50 years. With each economic epoch in the US corresponding to an economic crisis and the end of one model and the introduction of the next. The two most recent being the Hoover-Roosevelt transition and the Great Depression and the introduction of the New Deal, and Carter-Reagan transition with Stagflation and Oil Crises and the introduction of Reaganomics. The election of 2028 will be the end of the Reaganomics cycle, if his thesis holds. And if you squint and take a look at the BBB, you can see it is the ultimate caricature of 'trickle down' economics imaginable. Potentially leading to a bond-currency confidence crisis when debt service costs swamp the rest of the federal budget. I've imagined that the Trump is likely this imagined Crisis president, akin to Hoover and Carter. And there will be an economic crisis on the order of Great Depression or Stagflation, leading to a tumultuous several years and then the emergence of a new economic system in the US over roughly a decade. To your point, I believe AI will be the driver of the next era, and even the form of government. All of this leaves aside the 80 year cycle in the solipsistic American view of massive global crises, starting with their 1776 revolution, the 1860s Civil War, and the 1939-1945 World War II. We are now 80 years hence from 1945. I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts on Friedman's take, and whether the current MAGA movement is the end of an era, and not the beginning of a new. Thank you my Canadian friend.
I wouldn’t call it coincidence, exactly (definition: a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection) because there is a cause. It sounds more like ignorance (a lack of knowledge) with a twist of coincidence. So maybe a new phrase: a remarkable concurrence of ignorance.
Coincidence? Synchronicity? You be the judge. That said, once again, a throughly awesome post, Dan. Well worth a thoughtful read/think. Many thanks!
Had the economy gone south in 1936 FDR still would have won handily. I looked at the election results in 1938, when the economy did go south and Democrats lost 72 seats in the House and 8 seats in the Senate. First of all, Democrats won the total popular vote in that election.
To estimate an electoral vote outcome, I totaled up the electoral votes won by each party in the Senate races. For the rest I looked at the House elections. In most cases the results were lopsided in terms of seats won and I assigned electoral votes to one or the other party on that basis. In a few cases the seats were pretty evenly split. For these I calculated the average popular vote share for the districts won bay each party and assigned the state to the party with the higher average.
The result was 338 for the Dems and 193 for the Republicans. Conclusion, FDR would have won handily.
As for Republicans in 2028, they will lose if Trump is unpopular, by Rule 1. In fact, Trump would have lost in 2020 even if the pandemic had not happened, also by Rule 1. In fact, Trump won in 2024 by Rule 1 though in 2016 he won by Rule 3. Avoiding disasters like Bush II and Trump is why it is so important to have the dispensation.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-my-analytical-approach-is-different-9b0#:~:text=Translation%20into%20Democratic%20politics
What's really scary is how many American elections are determined by the price of gasolune which Presidents have almost no control over. Most electorate are just along for the.ride which is why I always get the government someon else deserves - and he's not bright. I think he's wrapped in a straightjacket behind two locked doors until election time when he gets a free pass for the day. PeePee was just edged out by probably the most qualified man to ever run for the office leading a party that delivered MAID, legal pot, dental care, pharma care, a 32 billiin dollar pipeline to tidewater for the long-suffering Alberta. Had Trudeau not generously stepped aside - nothing you'll ever see of the peeman - we'd be all sticky with MMAGA and singing a quite different tune. Rule still applies: No One Ever Lost Money Underestimating The American Public. Double-double for Canada.
Great analysis Dan, and your point of coincidence is well taken. I think the folly of world wide tariffs will be the 🍊guy’s downfall, however.
He clearly doesn’t understand economics or global markets.
America just hasn’t started its downturn yet… but it’s coming!
Also, a major war won’t be good for him either.
Will be interesting at the midterms!
Killer last line Dan. Great post.