The upset election of Donald Trump as next president of the United States that has plunged my friends into gloom has reminded me of a few things. The first is a comment on the presidential election process.
"At the end of all the primaries and caucuses," Richard Dawkins wrote, "after all the speeches and the televised debates, after a year or more of nonstop electioneering bustle and balloons and razzmatazz, who, out of that entire population of 300 million, emerges at the top of the heap? George W. Bush."
The evolutionary biologist raised this rhetorical question and answered it in the article he wrote on March 18, 2003, titled "Bin Laden's Victory." That was two days before Bush launched his attack on Iraq, telling Saddam Hussein: Leave your country within 48 hours or else face U.S. military might. The threat was worthy of a cheap gunslinger in an old Hollywood cowboy movie. Bush's charge against Saddam — possession of weapons of mass destruction — was concocted. Still he proceeded to destroy Iraq in the name of liberation and democracy.