From my new column in Taki’s Magazine:
Reading the Tea Leaves
Steve SailerSeptember 15, 2021
Why is it so hard to predict the future?
For example, why didn’t the Biden Administration guess that few soldiers of the now-defunct Afghan National Army would feel like risking becoming the last Afghan to die for the American-backed government, so once the U.S. closed Bagram air base there’d be an unseemly rush for the exits?
For that matter, why didn’t the vaunted intelligence community foresee that Saddam Hussein wouldn’t have weapons of mass destruction?
“What’s a little boom in murder when littering and loitering arrests were down, down, down?”
Similarly, with all the scientific expertise at the disposal of the White House, why did Biden more or less announce victory over the virus on July 4, almost the exact day of the upward inflection point of the Delta wave? And why did Biden then proclaim vaccine mandates just as the Delta wave appeared to be burning out in states where it had first taken off, such as Missouri?
As I type this, I notice that I might have spoken too soon, as case counts rose on Monday.
After all, it’s hard to predict the future.
There are two common explanations for these failures of anticipation. The first is that while it may look like the deep state is botching badly, they actually have accurately prognosticated every contingency and even their apparent fumbles are all part of their nefarious triple-bank-shot master plan.
Alternatively, the powers that be really are nitwits and many outsiders could do better in their place.
Read the whole thing there.
