There have been few times in my life where I felt like I made an accurate prediction in international relations or American politics. Things I got wrong or didn't see coming includes, but are certainly not limited to:
--Saddam Hussein would take the money and run off into exile rather than do Gulf War Round 2 Electric Boogaloo
--Ukraine would fall to Russia in days
--Hilary Clinton was going to soundly defeat a deeply flawed Donald Trump
--the UK isn't actually going to leave the EU
...the list goes on and on.
...but I'm happy that I got this one right. Like many others, I sensed the sea change that was happening throughout America, largely because my interests and my job force me to read widely, including a bunch of stuff I don't like written by people I don't like, and to travel and engage with a lot of people, including, yes, people I don't like and who don't like me.
Seeing things like the press slowly turning on Pres Biden was really kind of the first indicator for me that things were finally getting bad enough under the Democrats that the people were ready for a major change. Seeing people feel comfortable enough to publicly push back on the worst excesses of things like DEI, inflation, mass immigration, and crime made me realize that the public mood had changed. And then seeing so many people being willing to publicly support Trump, when the last two times he ran for president he (and, by extension, his supporters) were racists/Nazis/fascists/whatever--and the fact that the Democrats ran a candidate that was even more unlikeable than Hillary Clinton, which I didn't think was humanly possible--made me pretty confident that we were going to see an (R) victory. I did not expect the victory to be on the scale it was, but hey, I'll take the W.
I'm not saying the above to brag; as stated, I've been wrong about plenty and many other people, including several on this site, made the same prediction. I'm just glad I was right, for a change.
I thought about this thread when I read this article earlier today. To me, it's just another indicator that the country is slowly healing.
Last edited:
