Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016

Elo

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

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2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threadspage before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

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You said (emphasis mine): "one of the most important and surprising events of our time"

I tend to interpret "our time" as a period that is a bit longer than the last six months.

But even if you want to look at recent news, here are three things which I consider to be much more consequential than Donald Trump: (1) the European refugee crisis; (2) the Chinese economic troubles; (3) the Russian direct military intervention in Syria.

May I politely suggest paying less attention to the idiot box?

How about the various welfare states around the world finally starting to run out of other people's money. The biggest manifestations of this so far have been the financial crisis in the EU, and the various pension crises in US local governments.

Heck, in my more conspiratorial moods I'm inclined to suspect that these migrant crises are an excuse to import a bunch of convenient scapegoats who can than be blamed for the collapse of popular entitlement programs.

0buybuydandavis10y

The refugee crisis is very interesting. Not quite "Camp of the Saints", but it's a huge acceleration of frictions I expected to take much longer to play out, and not really hit the fan so soon. Chinese economic troubles? Recessions are big things, but they happen. Economies go up, they go down. Russian intervention in Syria. Russian satellite state getting military support. Shrug. Turkey seems much more interesting to me. I suppose the Russians intervention does make it possible for some serious confrontation with the US, but I don't see Putin or Obama having much interest in that.

3Vaniver10y

I'm not sure that argument goes through--if the European refugee crisis is important, then aren't Merkel, Obama, and Clinton important? And if they're important once they're in office, isn't the process by which they enter office important?