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Is This What You Meant By “Shaking Things Up”?
How Trump’s war on competence will lead to more tragedies like the crash of Flight 5342
I’m a nervous flyer under the best of circumstances. Ask my kids. Hitting a patch of turbulence is pretty much the only time — other than when the snack cart is making its rounds — that my sons look up from their books or their handheld video games, grinning impishly at each other as if this were just another roller coaster.
Meanwhile I’m sitting here with my eyes closed, knuckles whiter than a Republican fundraiser, breathing deeply and reciting Bene Gesserit mantras: I must not fear; fear is the mind-killer….
My kids think this is hilarious.
I bare myself thus to the snorts and eyerolls of the more insouciant air travelers in my reading audience, because I want you to understand the context for what I’m about to say next:
I predicted the crash of Flight 5342.
Well, maybe predict is a strong word. I foresaw it. From the moment Donald Trump got elected on a platform of gutting the federal bureaucracy, I foresaw a tragedy of exactly this nature. Well, maybe exactly is a strong word. I foresaw a tragedy of nearly this exact nature. Here’s sort of how my mind was working in mid-November:
