Four years ago, I wrote a sort-of tongue-in-cheek story for Kuro5hin.org (RIP) titled "Humanity's Second-Best Hope" [1]. I pointed out that the Democratic president had failed to deliver on the Change he had promised, and shared my faint hope that maybe Mitt Romney was a "political gladiator" who'd flip on the plutocracy once he was elected.

[1] http://www.TaxiWars.org/humanitys-second-best-hope/

Alas, Mitt Romney was no gladiator.

At some point in this election cycle, I noticed dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams' blog. On August 13, 2015 Scott had a post about Donald Trump titled "Clown Genius" [2]:

Like many of you, I have been entertained by the unstoppable clown car that is Donald Trump. On the surface, and several layers deep as well, Trump appears to be a narcissistic blow-hard with inadequate credentials to lead a country.

The only problem with my analysis is that there is an eerie consistency to his success so far. Is there a method to it? Is there some sort of system at work under the hood?

Probably yes. Allow me to describe some of the hypnosis and persuasion methods Mr. Trump has employed on you. ...

[2] http://blog.dilbert.com/post/126589300371/clown-genius

For the entire election cycle, the political media promoted Hillary Clinton as the presidential heir-apparent, as if she was The Chosen One. Usually the plutocracy runs a Chosen candidate against a backup - someone who, even if fickle voters decided to not select the Chosen candidate, would still be useful to them.

Donald Trump was not a backup candidate. He was give free coverage during the primaries because he was considered a clown-candidate that wouldn't be taken seriously, it was an easy story, and because it was thought that The Chosen One could beat him. This was covered in one of the Wikileaks emails...

Donald Trump is the Gladiator that Mitt Romney was not. I'm optimistic.

More recently, Scott Adams has pointed out that the people who are most freaked out by The Donald's victory are those who didn't see it coming - who believed the echo chambers' pronouncements that Hillary Clinton had basically won the election before a single vote had been cast. In one of the recent New York Times articles, Mr. Trump said that he "wants to do a good job". It's a huge undertaking to fill these 4000 positions - what matters most is not the individual appointees, but the guidance provided from the elected candidate at the top.

In the fall of 2011 I needed something to do... I'm over-qualified for just about any regular JOB, but Amazon hires anyone who passes their screening. The gig lasted about 2 months (December/January). I was so relieved when they finally let me go. Humanity's Second-Best Hope was about my time at Amazon (originally posted at Kuro5hin.org [RIP]).

I started driving a taxi a month later. It was a lot of fun, until Wall Street started subsidizing the upstarts...