Given that I’ve had 95% of the past 32 days to myself, I’ve had a lot of very interesting, if one-way, conversations.
So, a couple of predictions to contemplate:
August 26th: Floyd Mayweather will humiliate Conor McGregor in Las Vegas next week. The older, wily boxer should overcome the younger, brash UFC man, principally because they are fighting under boxing, not UFC, rules. McGregor, 28, will by his own admission, “quadruple [his] net worth” as a consequence. Lots of pain, lots of gain.
Next 12m: Donald Trump will resign the Presidency. He will declare victory in achieving his manifesto promises (facts and accuracy be damned, however). He will say he cannot achieve more because he is an outsider and because he’s being blackballed (McCarthy-style) by a political establishment that is closing ranks on him.
This is a man who has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to organise or sustain a three-way in a whore-house. He was never the saviour for the depressed, unemployed, disenfranchised, blue-collar American worker whose services have been priced out of the global marketplace by unions, technology or more competitive markets (this is called ‘globalization’, Donald…). He merely made the right noises, without a plan, and they believed him.
This speech from the romcom, The American President (1995, Michael Douglas, Michael J Fox, Annette Benning, Richard Dreyfus), is a reminder of the problems we face and the backbone that is missing from the political establishment, right now. If you replace references to “Bob Rumson” with “Donald Trump”, the picture becomes clear:
Another, earlier exchange between Michael J Fox (Lewis) and Michael Douglas (President Shepard) is also apropos, given how discredited Clinton had become and the nature of Trump’s core support base:
Lewis: “People want leadership. And in the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership, Mr. President. They’re so thirsty for it, they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.”
Shepard: “Lewis, we’ve had Presidents who were beloved, who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty, Lewis. They drink it because they don’t know the difference.”