Predictions

Seth Barrett Tillman: Reflections on the Revolution in the UK

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The first two posts of a five-post series:

Part 1: It Is All Cameron’s Fault:

Finally, you might ask why did Cameron promise the referendum in his party’s election manifesto? It is simple. Even with the promise of a referendum, Cameron barely overcame the UKIP surge: a 3.8 million vote surge. It was only by peeling off voters from UKIP—through the promise of the in-out referendum—that made him PM. Had he not made this election pledge, any number of marginal Tory seats would have tipped: Labour, Lib-Dem, or UKIP. There was no blunder here by Cameron. It was not the referendum which destroyed Cameron’s ministry; rather, it was the promise of a referendum which made Cameron the Prime Minister in the first instance.
 
[. . .]
 
Parties who have been rejected at the polls twice should engage in meaningful introspection, at least, if they expect to be taken seriously in the future. The let’s put all the blame on Cameron position lacks just the sort of gravitas that one hopes to see in serious opposition parties.

and

Part 2: The U.K.’s Bradley/Wilder Effect Is Enough To Swing Elections:

If a society permits those who engage in wilful violence and those that command the police & the revenue office to drive normal political expression underground, then that society will not have normal political expression. One consequence of the lack of normal political expression is that every poll will lack validity.*

(Related: Brexit, Predictions and Trump.)

Dewey Beats Truman!

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Seth Barrett Tillman counts his winnings from an astute Brexit prediction.

See also this brief related post by Seth.

Brexit, Predictions and Trump

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The bookies, until the votes were being counted, were showing greater than 2:1 odds against Brexit in yesterday’s referendum. The subsequent Brexit victory appears to confirm the hypothesis that many Brits were lying to pollsters.

The bookies are showing odds of around 3:1 against a Trump victory in our presidential election. Arguing predictions is a fool’s game, but it may be that our election polls are wrong for the same reason as the Brexit polls apparently were. The Democrats and their media allies have demonized Trump as a racist and misogynist, and it seems likely that many people who intend to vote for him aren’t admitting it. We’ll know soon enough.

The Federal Government’s “BIG LIE” About Muslim Terrorism in Orlando

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In its public relations on Omar Mateen’s attack in the Pulse night club in Orlando, the federal government is engaged in a propaganda technique know as “The Big Lie”.   That is, it’s  stating an untruth often enough to get people to believe it.

The Big Lie in this case, stated by both  FBI Director James Comey and President Obama is that Omar Mateen was a “lone wolf” that “self-radicalized over the Internet.”

It is four days after the Pulse attack.   Omar Mateen spent  18 days in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2011 and 2012. There is no way that all the associates of Mateen in those two trips can be known in four days.   Nor  what if any training or Islamist materials Mateen might have received on small items like USB drives while on those trips.

See if you can spot all the weasel words from this Fox News story passage quoting the Saudi Ministry of the Interior —

A Saudi Ministry of Interior spokesman confirmed that Mateen twice performed the umrah Islamic pilgrimage and that travel records showed he also visited the United Arab Emirates on one of the trips. But he said Saudi officials, who closely surveil tourists deemed to be a terror threat, had no evidence Mateen traveled to Yemen of made contact with known extremists during his visits to the Kingdom.”

Weasel Phrase #1 & questions raised —

 Mateen twice performed the umrah Islamic pilgrimage…

 

  1. Did Mateen attend Mosques or other Islamic organizations in Saudi Arabia with ‘extremist’ connections?
  2.  Did people who became extremists after 2011 to 2012 attend Saudi Mosques  or other Islamic organizations at the same time as Mateen or travel with Mateen?

Weasel Phrase  #2 & questions raised —

…had no evidence Mateen traveled to Yemen or made contact with known extremists during his visits to the Kingdom.

 

1. Would the Saudis know if  Mateen meet ‘known extremists’ in the UAE?

2. Did people who the UAE consider ‘extremists’ meet Mateen?

3. Did Mateen attend mosques or other Islamic organizations in the UAE  with extremist connections, and at the same time as then-unknown ‘extremists’?

Given the simple questions raised above, there is absolutely no reasonable way that Pres. Obama and the FBI Director stating that Omar Mateen “self-radicalized” can be considered as anything but a deliberate lie after only four days of investigation.

LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS

Given the use of the Big Lie on Orlando by FBI Director James Comey, we now have to assume all the following about organizations, politics and near-future events.

  1. FBI Director James Comey is President Obama’s partisan “good dog” in the same sense that Attorney General  Loretta Lynch, Director of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson,  and  Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are.
  2. The federal government’s top priority in dealing with Muslim terrorism in the USA will remain political correctness in surveillance before attacks and narrative damage control after attacks, rather than prevention of attacks.
  3. There will be an increasing number of domestic Muslim terrorist attacks because of the Obama administration’s open-borders immigration policy and refusal to properly vet this immigrant stream for radical Islamic Terrorists.
  4. Republicans now see DHS and FBI counterintelligence as an utterly Democratic partisan organization like the IRS.
  5. The  first Republican-majority government after the San Bernardino and Orlando terrorist attacks will see a new, independent, federal counterintelligence agency with an utterly partisan GOP senior leadership established.
  6. And last, there will be no indictment of Hillary Clinton over her illegal e-mail server unless and until Donald Trump wins the presidency.

Make your preparations for the future accordingly.

“Britain’s political class risks losing the authority to govern”

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From an astute commentary by Robert Salisbury, former Leader of the House of Lords. Almost all of the essay applies as well to the USA and other western countries.

Our own country is caught by all this, as it was in the first half of the 19th Century and in the middle decades of the 20th. We were able to adapt to survive: in the 19th by extending the franchise and in the 20th by expanding public services and mass prosperity. As a result British governments regained the authority to govern. They did so by reforming the institutions of representative government the country already had, thereby responding to the demands of an electorate emboldened and liberated by technological change.
 
Today, governments are once again losing the authority to govern, and for similar reasons. Another major financial crisis might lose them it completely; but a new crisis might not even be needed. Whitehall’s failure to control immigration, its puny efforts to tackle the housing question, the feebleness of our defences, the incompetence of our transport and energy policies might, whether jointly or severally, tip us over.
 
In the past, the country has been sustained in times of crisis by a solid body of electors who felt they had an interest in the existing structures which kept them, on the whole, safe and relatively prosperous. That body’s support is no longer so solid. The IT revolution is largely responsible. The speed of communications make governments and Parliamentary procedures look flat-footed. Increasingly the public is at least as well-informed as the Whitehall departments who are telling them what to do. It is virtually impossible to keep anything secret and anyone who betrays a confidence is regarded as heroic. The more rules we have, the more the public feels they are used as a means of flouting their spirit.
 
Worst of all, social media stimulate one issue politics and make the simple solution credible. You and I know that competent administration is boring and usually demands compromises. We also know that effective legislation needs careful preparation, much internal and external debate, a mind-numbing command of detail and a lively warning mechanism against the law of unintended consequences. The same applies to parliamentary scrutiny.
 
Any sensible electorate would be only too pleased to delegate this necessary day-to-day grunt to a Whitehall and Westminster it trusted and, although interested and argumentative, get on with the rest of its life.
 
Sadly, that is not where we are.

The candidacies of Trump and Sanders are in large part responses to public concerns about the problems Salisbury describes. They are inadequate responses, likely to fail politically and on their own terms and eventually to be superseded by other responses. The pot will continue to boil at greater or lesser intensity depending on who gets elected and what follows. It seems unlikely that the underlying problems will begin to be solved unless the voters develop a realistic understanding of what needs to be done, and start electing politicians who are both willing and competent to do it. It may be a while.