Who Wins Culture Wars ?

"Culture wars" usually erupt in election years, fueled by politicians trying to make up for the lack of ideas and alternatives.

Left-wing activists engage in tearing down monuments -from General Lee to Columbus-,  replacing flags and defunding the police. Right-wing activists wrap in Confederate flags, march with torches chanting against those who want to "replace us". 

Who can win "culture wars"? 

Did racism, fascism, and communism disappear after defeat in the battleground and sanction in the public speech? Does "political correctness" change minds? 

Did racism and segregation ended with the Civil War? Affirmative Action? Electing the first black President?

The answers are self-evident, but let's go a step further:

What are we supposed to do with the losers in cultural wars?   What are they? Where do they go? How do they live the rest of their lives? 

"A house divided cannot stand" means that winners are supposed to exterminate losers? Exile them? Take away their First Amendment Rights? 

Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and  Paul Kagame led their countries out of civil and cultural wars to long and peaceful processes of reconciliation and integration.  The United States, South Africa, India, and Rwanda lost millions of lives in those wars and came out stronger thanks to this approach.

Facing an uphill battle for reelection, President Trump focuses his campaign on engaging in culture wars, assuming that this was what helped him win in 2016 -a curious concession to his most ardent critics on the Far Left and his own party-. 

The country, meanwhile, has much more important things to care for. It looks at an epic economic downturn, a raging pandemic, and an overwhelmed healthcare system. 

If Trump wins reelection, he will face a much more divided country than the one he found. If he loses, bitterness and division will remain for a long time as an obstacle for his successors.

The 40 percent of independent voters and the critical swing states will vote based on the future, not the past. 

The past cannot be changed nor forgotten. It must be studied with respect and an open mind to learn from it lessons that can only be applied to the future. Those lessons will be different for different people, times, and circumstances. That's why museums and monuments must stand in place no matter what the opinion of the day is. Sometimes as a reminder of heroism, others as Holocaust or September 11 memorials, to remember atrocities. Heroes for some will be always villains for others. Napoleon and Cesar. TR and FDR. Churchill and Cromwell. 

Some monuments will always have opposite meanings for different groups. There is no way to escape this contradiction. It's up to civility to accept "freedom for the thought we hate" - and move on.  Certainly, the military that fought for an abhorrent cause -like Generals Lee or Rommel- can be at once seen as heroes or villains. Removing their existing monuments will not change that perception. It might more likely intensify the sentiment on each side of the argument and invite revenge and reciprocation, not change and coming together. 

Monuments to controversial historical figures or concepts will always be exposed to public protests and rallies against whatever they represent that is at the time unacceptable for some. There is always the recourse of legislative action to remove them. That is very different from symbolic lynching or mob-driven takedowns.

Adding new monuments is an entirely different thing. There, contemporary citizens can come to a democratic vote that will not close the argument either but will at least feel fair. Once the monument is up, posterity should just leave it that way and make all the arguments and demonstrations against it without defacing it or removing it, or destroying it.

It might sound inadequate, but it's better than the alternative of "quicksands history" that revisionists propose.

Should Egyptians bring down the pyramids in revenge for Pharos' slave-owning tyranny? Should Romans destroy Caligula's and Nero's statues? 

There is no final conclusion for history. Historians are not judges. Retroactive justice is no justice at all and expressly outlawed in most judicial systems by statutes of limitations and the concept of double jeopardy.  

Perhaps the US can learn from Rwanda, the scene of a horrific genocidal war. 

The "losers" were judged by their contemporaries in their villages and sent to formal justice only when crimes were proven. As in most civil wars, the "war crimes" involved killing among neighbors and relatives for ethnic reasons. 

Asking for ethnic origin was banned. There will be no Hutus and Tutsis, but Rwandan. And Never Again Rwanda keeps reminding coming generations about the dangers of engaging in "culture wars".

In less than one or at most four years Donald Trump will be an ex-president, as all the 44 before him and those who will come after.

Culture wars are a losers' sport.

Post-Pandemics: A Long View Approach

What will be the shape of the post-Pandemic world? 

One serious difficulty for answering such a question is that we are still in the middle of the Pandemic progression.

Lockdowns -total then partial- and emergency economic and social measures -induced coma for entire industries, colossal monetary stimulus and rescue plans for the duration, closed borders, exceptional trade barriers- cannot -and shouldn't be extrapolated.

Emergency, war economies are not valid foundations to build any serious strategy. Just think of September 2001 travel restrictions, the 5 or 6 bubble bursts in the last 20 years. TSA controls in airports didn't change air travel nor the current restrictions will. Duration will not change the fact that there is no alternative to globalization.

Looking at realistic options can be more productive. Let's make a shortlist of what is likely to come after a vaccine and effective treatment is in place -most likely by mid-2021-:

1. An inevitable bounce-back of all major and previously healthy OCDE economies with key differences in shape (V, U, L, W), course (2 or 3 rounds of open/close), and pace (from China's fast to EU and Latam slow)
2. A new "space race" for vaccines and prevention with large expansions of healthcare spending and investment that will relocate government spending and redirect private,
3. Restructuring of global value chains replacing unreliable partners -China beware- that can't control their domestic practices and epidemic issues with others that can. -Opportunities for Southeast Asia, Oceania-
4. The reinvention of business models factoring health and sanitation. 
5. "PTSD"- scared customers changing habits and preferences in critical ways for several industries: (1) travel, tourism & hospitality (2) food (3) entertainment (4) travel (5) leisure (6) workplace (7) education (8) retail (9) real estate -particularly commercial- and (10) urban development (a trend away from high-density, public transportation)
6. Inflationary risks
7. Government debt & public spending

E-performance will likely stay at least 60% of the current level of replacement for knowledge and "white collar" work. E-learning will enter a new level of maturity and the higher education equation will veer away from "campus" and "real estate" towards the lower-price point, learning experience-focused options (global faculty, local application, flexible options)

Like a meteorite falling into Earth altered the climate eons ago, the pandemic will determine winners -the Amazons and Zooms that will thrive after capturing market share-; fast learners -the Ubers able to reinvent and/or exploit new opportunities and "Empresas" -those industries tied to high-maintenance, rigid models and high sunken costs such as tourism, hospitality, travel, and food-.

It's time to look around, and then, to look inside and start thinking anew.

Pandemics: The Long View Approach

COVID 19 pandemic makes the perfect case for the concept of this Blog: a long, global view as opposed to the narrow, partisan, parochial, and short-term approach that has brought the world to this avoidable catastrophe. 

The last report from The Economist reveals the extent to which a crisis like this have been forecasted in advance... and ignored by press and politicians more interested in indefinite but more marketable problems such as global warming or inequality of income.  

Quote (bold is from this author):

"In february 2018 a panel of experts convened by the World Health Organisation (who) put together a list of diseases that posed big public-health risks but for which there were few or no countermeasures. It featured various well-recognised threats, including Ebola, sars, Zika and Rift Valley fever. But it also included “Disease X”. 

This illness, caused by a pathogen never before seen in humans, would, the panel said, emerge from animals somewhere in a part of the world where people had encroached on wildlife habitats. It would be more deadly than seasonal influenza but would spread just as easily between people. By hitching rides on travel and trade networks, it would journey beyond its continent of origin within weeks of its emergence. It would cause the world’s next big pandemic, and leave economic and social devastation in its wake. Indeed.

Less than two years after the report was published Disease X turned up. It began late last year in Wuhan, China, and the wider world became aware of it in January. It has now infected nearly 10m people and killed almost 500,000 of them. That death toll is also likely to reach seven figures before things are over. For Disease X now has a name: covid-19. 

I told you so 

Though perhaps the loudest, the who’s was not the only warning that something like this might happen. Moreover, some of the prophets, such as Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist who is head of an independent research organisation called the EcoHealth Alliance, specifically focused on the risk posed by bat-borne coronaviruses, as sars-cov-2, the cause of covid-19, has turned out to be. And the point of issuing those warnings was preparedness. 

With the correct systems in place a potential pandemic, spotted early, might be nipped in the bud. 

Instead, the world’s response to the new illness has been similar to its response to sars in 2002 and, after that, to h5n1 avian influenza in 2005. This is to move into a costly panic mode intended to slow the spread of the disease while scientists race to develop a vaccine. “This,” as Dr Daszak, observes wryly, “is not a plan.”

Zoonotic infectious diseases are as frequent as flu, as dangerous as HIV, and as frequently reported as the past five years of SARS, MERS, and so on. Yet, there has been more funding for finding (or implementing) "solutions" to long term, ill-defined menaces such as "global warming" or "climate change" than to actual and real epidemics such as SARS, MERS,m HIV, Ebola, to name some of COVID 19 predecessors.

Wild animals wet markets, unsanitary poultry, pig production, and distribution continues rampant and coexistence of human, bats, and civets remain as common in  Asia as it was before the current pandemic.

This is not science fiction. It's just willing ignorance of overwhelming and continuous scientific evidence. At a fraction of the cost of keeping 14 nuclear carriers and billions of dollars in defense spending for the remote eventuality of a WWIII-like confrontation in the indefinite future China, the US, and the EU could have already developed an effective vaccine and treatments.

Bill Gates warned in his TED talks  5 years before this disaster, only for conspiracy theorists to attack him incited by partisan propaganda networks on the Left and on the Right side of the spectrum 

Gates -whose only crime is being a self-made billionaire turned philanthropist for the past 20 years- has been leading actual efforts to fight pandemics out of his own pocket. Governments -US, EU, and China- have willingly ignored or even obstructed these and other efforts by hiding information until the crisis was already consuming the world.

This is not new. Henrik Ibsen wrote An Enemy of the People back in 1896 with the same story: short-sighted politicians serving special interests attacking science and blocking efforts to save lives.

It's belated time to look at social events with a long view, fact- and science-based perspective. 

Or suffer the consequences.

From Obama to Trump ... and back?: Beyond the Stereotype, the other side of America

For all his evident shortcomings, Trump holds a steady 30-35 % of the US vote. The stereotype of hillbillies, white supremacists, "systemic racists" and "white trash" can't account for more than a marginal part of all that.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson explains  the Trump voter phenomenon -not to be confused with Donald Trump's persona- in a much more nuanced way in his book The Case for Trump 

9 million Obama voters -from 2008 and 2012 elections- that voted for Trump in 2016 and might vote again for him. 

They are (1) small town, rural voters; (2) small business, family-owned and operated, (3) college-educated white and black, (4) latino american, self-employed immigrants.

 They have common immediate requirements such as:

1. Lower taxes
2. Keeping their private insurance
3. Keeping their access to charter schools
4. Repealing the state tax that kills multi-generational farm families
5. Rejection of "identity politics" and embracing "Americanism", melting-pot approach to cultural integration (speak English, be self-sufficient, raise traditional families values)
6. Pragmatic, non-ideological voters: "it's the economy, stupid" criterion first.

Here are some samples from focus groups held by WSJ and ABC news following them in their towns for the past two years:

Texas:

Iowa:

Georgia: Black voters

Obama voters for Trump

A reality check can help assess the "two Americas" -rural and urban- trends and see beyond political stereotypes and pundit talk what the actual voters vote for.

Even if Trump loses in an anti-Trump "tsunami", these voices and voters must be heard and taken into account to understand why.

Biden's Presidency: Stormy Weather Ahead

Thanks to Trump's "Katrina" handling of the pandemic and race riots, Joe Biden could likely become the next US President.  

Aged, uninspiring, and lacking a strong base of his own, Biden would have a hard time controlling the nihilistic Far Left that menaces with taking over cities and establish their own "Occupy..." communes around major cities to force their agenda.

The problem with this perspective is not so much the badness of the agenda -a smorgasbord of failed, half-baked 1970s ideas- but their lack of direction in a moment of extreme economic and social turmoil. Think of a 1- or 2-year Katrina on steroids, with over 250.000 deaths and economic paralysis at 15% unemployment.

The party of no ideas (Democrats) could take over a bizarre one-term presidency of the party of (very) bad ideas.

A Biden presidency could usher a "malaise", Jimmy Carter-like era of higher taxes, unemployment, recession, and social turmoil.

Hope is not a strategy. Fear neither.

Will the economic vote trump (pun intended) the Katrina-like handling of the pandemic and social turmoil?  Swing states are up for grabs between two (very) bad options. 

Trump fatigue? From Watergate to Waterloo

Like in every presidential election year, it's harvest time in American politics. 

As of June 2020, it seems that chickens are coming home to roost for President Trump. His past 3 months have been a dangerous, self-defeating demonstration of poor management and even poorer leadership and the polls are starting to show an ominous trend.

What seemed a few months ago very likely reelection is slipping away from Trump as a consequence of a powerful mix of economic downturn, erratic pandemic management, and an ill-advised, touch Nixonian "law and order" response to racial tension and protests.

Trump took for granted that a sharp recovery before November would be enough to stay in office regardless of his behavior (as he once proclaimed during his election campaign he could shot a person in 5th Avenue and get away with it)

Trump based his reelection strategy on that factor, turning up his cultural war rhetoric to please its unconditional base. He seems to be betting that 40% of the vote can re-elect him regardless of the rest.  The electoral map and polls increasingly dispute that assumption.

The problem with this "silver bullet" strategy is that Trump has alienated almost all other voting groups to an extreme that looks hard to revert. 

Piling up death tolls, lockdowns, abrupt and induced recession, and racial strife, there are growing signs of "Trump fatigue". Trump himself looks increasingly out of touch with reality like his mentor Richard Nixon during the Watergate days. 

Nixon's farewell speech comes to mind. He discovered too late that hate-based politics can be self-defeating:

Instead of reaching out to decisive voters and seeking a middle ground, Trump looks increasingly absorbed in being his own campaign chief and distracted on blowing dog whistles on irritating issues such as Confederate monuments and rallies in defiance of pandemic guidance and racial sensitivities. 

Trump's bet on partisan polarization is clearly backfiring.

This election could not only rend Trump a one-term president but cost GOP both houses of Congress 

The forecasts for the Presidential election show anti-Trump waves forming even in formerly safe states

And the possibility of losing control of the Senate grows

This would be a catastrophic farewell for a President that promised a string of "wins". A ticket from Watergate to Waterloo not only for Trump but a potential reversal of fortunes for the entire GOP and whichever "win" he might have claimed so far.

This is clearly not good for Trump and his supporters, but -much more importantly- it might be not good for the economy and the country.

Given the current Democratic party platform's sharp turn towards the progressive Left, a Biden-Warren Presidency would mean big government, tax-heavy solutions could delay or even destroy what is already a hard but promising recovery.

Also, it would swing the cultural wars pendulum from Trump's Tea Party to Warren's anti-business, BLM's identity politics, and Biden's unions' protectionism rather than calming them.

That might be Trump's presidency's worst legacy. A full opposite of all his presidency tried to accomplish. And a huge step backward for sensible pro-growth and the free market,  free trade policies that are the only way for the US to come out of a mountain of 30 trillion debt without a major recession.

Neither the economy nor Trump seems to be able to avoid it.

Perhaps the economy can make it -after all this is America-.

How about trying to be more like the best of it?

Time for Civility

"Treat everybody well when you are going up, because is more than likely you'll meet them again in your way down"  Argentinian saying

During these days of multiple crises and social unrest, a serious lack of a key component of presidential leadership becomes self-evident: civility.

What is civility? You can tell it when you see it. Just looking at the numerous positive examples such as the one that starts this entry: President Obama honoring Presidents Bush 43 and 41 in the White House.

Or you can look at the President's Club -where all our living presidents get together to seek advice and support in a job that has no previous training- 

Historically, US Presidents have treated their predecessors with respect and civility. That is true for Abraham Lincoln naming his former primary rival Seward Secretary of State and forming a famous "team of rivals" in his cabinet during a Civil War

Or President Obama doing the same by appointing former rival Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

Or finally, all presidents paying respect to Bush 41 at his funeral. 

Or the traditional roasts at the White House Correspondents Dinner

All Presidents have followed this bipartisan American tradition that reminds us all that we are the United States and not a loose Confederation of warring states and parties.

President Trump is the only President that has largely abandoned the tradition of civility and attacked his predecessors from the bully pulpit. 

This is unacceptable, substandard uncivil behavior.

The multiple crises we face as a nation and as part of our shared world require a united United States and a President that sets the tone by example.

Think for a moment that inevitably every President in a Republic becomes a former President.

Think for a moment of Jimmy Carter -who still prays for Trump as President-

May 29, 2020: From Heaven to Hell in a single day

In a few hours of May 30th, 2020, the US's highest highs and lowest lows were exposed to a planetary audience. On that day,  the SpaceX Dragon capsule sent two astronauts to the Space Station marking the first time-space travel could be done by a private startup competing with others at a fraction of the cost of the first NASA taxpayer-funded missions. 

Not only that, the booster rocket Falcon 9 returned to a launching pad ready to be reutilized with astonishing precision.

While the country celebrated the technological achievement in the skies, an outburst of a century-old tradition of racial violence brought all Americans (and the world's) attention back to Hell in the well-known tradition of police brutality against blacks and rioting and self-defeating looting afterward.

Left and Right-wing politicians -helped by an intentionally divisive President- added fuel to the flames by justifying unacceptable behaviors -police brutality and looting- with equally flawed rhetoric and slogans. 

Left and Right coincided in blaming the victims with stereotypes -dangerous black men, a racist cop, white privilege neighborhoods, the "poor" looting- that flew in the face of watchable facts. Our lying eyes could see helpless black man choked to death, cops (white and black low income) letting rioters burn their cars and beat them up following orders, looters filling the trunks of their own cars, and even rented U-Haul trucks.

So much for cable "news" -an oxymoron for anybody who watches hour after hour of endless repetition of the same (one or two for each hour is enough for Fox, MSNBC, and CNN)  "news" twisted and washed with partisan talking points.

The country remains struggling with its own power, between astonishing creation and divisive self-destruction.

Add to the picture the pandemic tragedy -which already has caused more deaths in 4 months than the combined wars in Corea and Vietnam in many years-. In this case, partisan politics have added a secondary infection to the virus by dividing those who want to work from those who want to live as if these two were exclusive options. 

It's time to stop watching cable "news" networks to stop their toxic partisan misinformation and look at the skies for inspiration to work more sensibly on Earth.

After all, looking up always helps find the better angels of our Nature.

A Global Stroke

COVID 19 pandemic has been compared to many things: previous pandemics, wars, economic recessions. It has indeed similarities with all of them. But Fareed Zakharia identified a critical area in which it is unique.

This epidemic is the first in human history to provoke a simultaneous freeze of all economic and most social activity.

More than a storm, or a hurricane, COVID 19 crisis resembles a stroke.

What a stroke does to the human body, the pandemic does to the social and economic system:

1. Impairs the whole social and economic system
2. Threatens life (making health every business' business)
3. Leaves sequels (V, U or L shape recoveries

We are still nowhere near to understand quite well what point 3 will look like. Will the economy get back on its legs? Will it do it soon? Will it recover completely or just partially?

Like after a stroke, life changes are unavoidable. Rebalancing social and economic life will be complex and require reinvention and repurposing. 

Like after a stroke, it will require for many of us to let go what was sure and safe and face more uncertain and unsettling times. 

For some of us, perhaps most, surely many, it will be life-changing.

We still can think it thr0ugh and come back of it better equipped for the next -which experts consider will likely come- 

In any case, this is not a crisis that can go to waste.

It will force critical changes such as:

1. Glocalization: bringing supply chains closer to customers
2. Nearshoring: opening opportunities for borders to become more integrated in mega regions
3. Replacing China with reliable partners
4. Reinventing industries such as tourism, hospitality, food
5. Precipitating virtual work and e-performance as the new standard for work
6. Addressing slow "U-shaped" recoveries around the world
7. A world of cheap money with all its opportunities and threats
8. Bringing health and healthcare into the economic equation and to the forefront of national priorities
9. Massive demand for retraining of millions of low-income workers in mass-employing industries (food, hospitality, tourism, travel)
10. Developing readiness and resilience for the next pandemic

The "shape" of the recovery will be uneven between US, EU, Asia and the developing countries and it's still too early to know if each economy will get back on its feet, use walkers, wheelchairs or remain bed-ridden for at least 2021.

Pandemic Crisis: It's SARS 2002 all over again - But worse. Things to do and not to do about it

The risk of a global pandemic the size of the 1918 Spanish Flu or the 16th hundreds Black Death has been there is plain sight since SARS outbreak in 2002.

Once controlled, only specialists and dedicated philanthropists like Bill Gates kept warning about a danger that was manifold more likely than global warming or another recession. Even more likely than a bear market.

Here are some readings for those who want to know more about 

1. A brief recent  history of Virus & Plagues
2. and what to do about it.

And here is more Bill Gates ideas about what to do with the coronavirus Second Coming.

As for now, two equally myopic approaches engage in political warfare: those who want to quarantine everyone until the vaccine is ready and those who want to start the Easter Parade and die for the economy.

Those are the options for those who drive into cul-de-sacs. There is no way to solve the problem as a "zero-sum" game. 

Those who want to channel their energy more productively (and sanely) may just turn off the networks engaged in political football look for fresher horizons and saner ways to endure what seems to be a long and bumpy way ahead.

Most are already turning to Zoom or WhatsApp their way to stay in touch with family, friends and some sort of businesses.  That's a good beginning.

Take a look for that at our coming www.ispiglobal.org events just divided into two areas:

1. How to stay in touch and sane
2. How to make a living while this lasts

Facing the Virus Flood, some are setting up a new network of virtual rafts rather than the Biblical Arch.

This author is one of them and will stay in touch.

Pandemic crisis: all bets are off - and neither markets nor government have a clear answer

A global pandemic that started largely unnoticed in China has taken over the entire world and all the forecasts with it.

What was underestimated as a new version of SARS has shown more like the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu

World wars and globalization operate in both cases as channels that spread the virus fast and below the radar. 

The "Spanish flu" didn't actually start in Spain, but was first reported there because it was the only country that had not censored news. In the case of China, this worked exactly in reverse, because the new virus became epidemic in a country under rigid press censorship since 1949. 

China had many reasons not to report the epidemic early, mostly economic, because its economy is heavily dependent on exports. And exports they did. 

Flights, conferences and cargo continued to flow even when the city of Wuhan -whose wildlife meat markets allowed the virus to jump from animals to humans- was closed during a first outbreak while all information was censored by the CCP. Nobody knows how many people actually died in Wuhan to this day.

Facing the pandemic, The Economist defined two courses of action:

1. Suppression

China operated in the same manner that caused this and other SARS-like outbreaks: using the absolute power that dictatorships have to censor to also close the city and accesses and let people trapped inside to make sure there was not possibility of spread.

That stopped the diffusion but only temporarily. Once the locks are relaxed, the cases spike up again because those who weren't exposed to the virus can't develop defenses against it.

In addition, if it's not possible to "seal out" cities for more than 3 or 4 months like China did, once the virus "left the barn" it continues to spread. Most EU countries have such dense and close cities that it's almost impossible to do what China did with Wuhan.

Finally, suppression also presents the additional challenge of economics: it creates a cascade of paralysis in vital value chains and critical supply and demand.

2. Mitigation: 

South Korea and Singapore used massive and quick testing to detect and isolate the infected, stalling successfully the spread without massive economic paralysis. Once again, this requires a rare combination of tests availability and organized action, much easier in these two countries that in larger ones.

Mitigation might not stall the economy immediately, but it might overwhelm healthcare resources between 6 to 8-fold their capacity to treat the infected.

US has been oscillating between 1 and 2, with a Federal government leaning towards the second and large states and cities like those in California and New York trying to follow the the first approach. 

US's federalist, decentralized and non-universally covered healthcare and "divided government" type of governance makes the country extremely difficult to work without resorting to special executive powers such as those vested to POTUS during world wars and the Great Depression.

Understanding why Trump won, wins, and could likely be reelected

Those who didn't vote for Trump and those who actively hate his very provocative public behavior seem unable to understand the reasons of his growing domestic support, his foreign policy's successes and the sustained economic boom he presides and encourages.

Watching some documentaries may help those who are not hostages to the oxymoron of partisan logic and thinking. Turning off CNN, Fox, Breitbart, MSNBC and PBS can be a good start. Read books and the reasoning of the other side of your ideological and political spectrum instead.

Let's begin with the contempt and condescension towards Trump's intellect and his supporters':

Hillary Clinton has yet to realize why she blew her own  "blue wall" in the Midwest -the only wall she could break through- and why her party has left her for the Far Left, that blames her for not having been even more wrong about understanding the "Somewhere" voters that used to vote Democrat. 

One good start to understand why middle America's Obama voters turned into Trump voters is reading J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy :

And the more in depth sociological and demographic-based analysis in Charles Murray's "Coming Apart":

In his book "The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics" British sociologist David Goodhart explains this "cognitive the same phenomenon between Remainers and Brexiteers in UK as well. He does it in terms of "anywheres" -college educated urban professionals with global skills finding jobs around the world - coming apart from "somewheres" -trades-trained suburban multi-generational blue collar workers losing their jobs to globalization and "creative destruction" fueled by "anywheres'-.

Even if you are an "anywhere" -or perhaps especially if you are one of those "anywhere" worried about the apparent right-turn in US and Western Europe voters- it's still time to look at the other side of your spectrum and remember that elections not only have consequences,  but lessons that if not learned, may come back with a vengeance.

Relax, give yourself time to open your mind to the other side's views and give a second look at how and why Donald Trump became our 45th president in 2016.

And if you think Trump is dumb and ignorant in political matters you should also check this long interview he gave David Rubinstein well before he decided to run for office a second time. 

There is a method to Trump's "madness", to his deliberate incivility towards others, and to his very New York-real estate-mogul bargaining tactics. And that method is by any means any less astute than Washington DC politicians grandiloquent rhetoric. 

Those who look down on Trump's intellect or political acumen could use some recent memory to look at how their previous forecasts based on that premise make them look now: