The conspirators shift gears

If, like me,  you find yourself perusing conspiracy websites every so often, you're probably wondering what the conspiracists are gonna do now.

I mean, the whole lot of 'em claimed that Hillary Clinton was in league with the Illuminati at the very least, and at worst was herself the Antichrist.  The election was rigged in her favor, they said, and anyone who got in her way would be steamrolled.  Some claimed that her opponents wouldn't only be shoved out of the way, they'd be assassinated.  She'd win the presidency, then proceed to destroy America.

And then two things happened.  (1) The election was pretty fraud-free, as anyone with any knowledge of the electoral process anticipated.  And (2) Donald Trump won.

Now, if we were talking about normal people here, the expected response would be for them to have a good laugh at themselves, and say, "Wow, I guess we were wrong!  What a bunch of nimrods we are!"  And then vanish into well-deserved obscurity.  Alex Jones, especially, who a few weeks ago was in tears on-air when he spoke of the inevitability of a Clinton presidency, should be clean out of a job.

But these aren't normal people; these are conspiracy theorists.  Which means that the logical thing to do is to assume...

... that Donald Trump himself is part of the conspiracy.

I shit you not.  One week, and they're already turning on him.  Our first contribution from the Loose Grasp On Reality cadre is William Tapley, a right-wing evangelical loony who calls himself the "Third Eagle of the Apocalypse."  (What happened to Eagles #1 and 2, I don't know.)  Tapley says that not only is Trump being controlled by the Illuminati, so is Melania.

The evidence for this?  A mural in the Denver International Airport that has two figures, a man and a woman.  The woman looks vaguely like Melania Trump.  The man, Tapley says, looks as if he is having a lewd act performed upon him by the woman.  For some reason, the only possible conclusion we can draw from all of this is that Trump is a member of the Illuminati.

"Please don’t tell Anderson Cooper what you and I both see," Tapley says, in a video you can watch at either of the links posted above.

Don't worry, Mr. Tapley.  We're not telling Anderson Cooper anything.

If that wasn't enough, we have a second contention, which is that Donald Trump wasn't born in the United States, he was born "Dawood Ibrahim Khan" in the Waziristan region of Pakistan.

While this is funnier than hell from the perspective that Trump was one of the most prominent spokespeople for the whole Obama birtherism thing, I have to admit that as a hypothesis, it doesn't have much to recommend it.  As far as I can see, they just found a photograph of a blond kid in vaguely Middle Eastern garb, and proclaimed that it must be Donald Trump as a child.

Dawood "Donald" Ibrahim-Trump

So it was kind of reassuring to find that the other trending story on conspiracy websites these days is that the earthquake that struck near Christchurch, New Zealand a couple of days ago was caused by a "seismic blasting ship" sent for some reason by President Obama.  Wikileaks, which at this point has damn little credibility left even without this story, apparently said so.  "These is science showing disturbances that are linked to the earthquakes," one commenter said (verbatim).  Which is enough proof for me.

Thanks, Obama.

Anyhow, I find it fascinating how quickly the conspiracy nutjobs are pivoting on Donald Trump.  I guess if your baseline assumption is that you can't get elected without the blessing of the Illuminati, it stands to reason, if I can use the word "reason" in this context.  But at least it's a mood lightener after the last week, which I sorely needed.  Nice to know there are still people out there who are both crazy and relatively harmless.

The right to fear

I keep telling myself "this will be my last political post," but circumstances keep intervening.

The circumstance this time was one of my Facebook friends who posted an article that said that the people who didn't vote for Donald Trump, and who are now in a serious freak-out about the future of our country, are simply sore losers who can't handle not winning.  We are, the author said, "whiny safe-space liberals" who "were told by mommy and daddy that it's only fair if everyone gets a trophy," and therefore we just need to grow up, suck it up, and deal.

My first thought, after reading this, was that it must be nice to see things that black-and-white.  Makes life easy.  In reality, of course, there were dozens of reasons that people voted the way they did (on both sides).  The pro-life/pro-choice issue, considerations of foreign policy and our relations with China, Russia, and the Middle East, concerns over the rights of LGBT individuals, the size of government, the role of the military...  The reason the election went the way it did is not a matter of a single issue.

Neither, I might add, is the reaction of the people who were on the losing side.  Maybe some of 'em are of the sore-loser variety; they do exist.  Those of you who are regular readers of Skeptophilia know that I've railed as hard as anyone about the tendency of colleges to cave in to students who want nothing more than to be continually validated, who demand that above all, they never have their preconceived notions challenged.  The whole "safe-space" concept completely contradicts the real purpose of education, which is to push the envelope, look at other points of view, expand the mind.  (Note that I am referring to "safe spaces" insofar as the term applies to intellectual pursuits; of course students should be safe with respect to discrimination, bullying, or bodily harm.)

But to characterize the protests now going on over the prospects of a Trump presidency as solely due to Democrats being poor losers is to miss the reality.  Not only does such a stance conveniently forget the ugly, and often racist, rhetoric that flew about from Republicans each time Obama won, it also ignores the fact that many of the people who are protesting are justified in being afraid.  Trump's stump speeches marginalized one group after another -- immigrants (legal and otherwise), Muslims, LGBT, women, atheists... the list goes on and on.

Oh, but that was just chest-thumping, a way to get his base excited, right?  He didn't mean any of that stuff literally, it was just the political version of "locker room talk."  Okay, add to that the appointment of Steve Bannon of Breitbart as Chief Strategist of the incoming administration -- a man who was called "a racist anti-Semite" by John Weaver, adviser to Republican Governor John Kasich of Ohio -- and you might understand why a Jewish friend of mine said, "We always heard, 'Never Again.'  I believed that.  I don't now."

And whatever you might say about Trump's intentions, it appears that some of his followers are in no doubt about taking the whole thing literally.  Hate crimes spiked right after the election -- to the point that even conservative media outlet Forbes commented upon it.  There is a new website called "Why We're Afraid," started with the intention of documenting cases where this ominous rhetoric has crossed the line into actual threats.  Here are just a few of the cases this site records:

• At work at a hospital where I'm a member of the junior staff.  An elder physician came up to me and told me I should get ready to go to the death camp now that Trump was elected.  I'm openly gay, and he knows this.
• At a church support group.  A women of Latino heritage says that a family member, a child, was told at school that he and his family were going to be sent “back to Mexico.”  The response from a member of the group: “Well, I’m sure you’ll be happier in Mexico.”
• Overheard at work at a trucking company. Oregon, 11/11/16: “This is a white country.  It’s always been a white country, and now we’re taking it back.”
• [From a U.S. citizen of Syrian heritage] I was minding my own business pumping gas when a pick-up truck filled with four white males blasting country music drove-by.  As they passed the gas station, the passenger leaned out and yelled, “Trump’s President now take that fucking dirty rag off your head you towel fucking desert nigger before I take it and hang you with it.  Make America White Again!”
• Woke up this morning to find someone had spray-painted "Die Faggot!  Your time here is over!  Trump 2016" on my car and the side of my house.

I know that like with most ugly acts, these are the actions of a few and don't represent the majority of voters who cast their ballots for Donald Trump.  But for fuck's sake, don't tell the rest of us we have no right to be afraid.  Own up and admit that your candidate did incite such behavior, whether or not he "meant it literally."

And better still, let's hear you repudiate such horrific acts.  You're saying that the folks who don't support Donald Trump are overreacting, that they have no justifiable reason for fear?  Prove it.  Stand up and shout down the people who are, right now, doing these things.  You may have perfectly legitimate reasons for voting for Trump, but it is now incumbent upon you to demonstrate that a Trump presidency isn't going to turn into the horror show that is already, before a week has passed, beginning to unfold.

I grew up in rural southern Louisiana.  The lion's share of my family and high school friends are conservative, and the majority of them voted for Donald Trump.  I know them -- I know they would never condone such things.  So I'm asking them, and any other readers who are conservative: show us that you will not tolerate the scapegoating of minorities and other marginalized groups, that you will stand up for the right of all citizens of this country to live, work, and play without fear of being the targets of harassment and violence.

You want us to pipe down, to be good losers, to "suck it up and deal?"  Okay.  But only if you put your money where your mouth is and show us that we on the losing side have no reason to fear.

The Cabinet from hell

Okay, folks, I'm trying not to panic about a Trump presidency.  I won't say that I have a naturally sunny disposition -- my tendency when confronted by adversity is to shriek "Dear god we're all gonna die!" -- but I try to temper this with a "this too shall pass" attitude.

But my desire to keep my hopes for the future on an even keel were given a severe blow yesterday when I found out that the president-elect has chosen Myron Ebell to head the Environmental Protection Agency, and has his eye on either Forrest Lucas (of Lucas Oil) or Sarah "Drill, Baby, Drill" Palin for Secretary of the Interior.

And this has brought out my inner Chicken Little something fierce.

Ebell is one of the most vocal climate change deniers out there (I will not refer to them as skeptics, because that's not what they are -- skeptics respect evidence).  Ebell considered the U.S.'s participation in the Paris Accords to be "clearly an unconstitutional usurpation of the Senate’s authority."  He went on record in an interview in Vanity Fair in 2007 as saying that "There has been a little bit of warming ... but it’s been very modest and well within the range for natural variability, and whether it’s caused by human beings or not, it’s nothing to worry about."

For the record, July 2016 was the fifteenth consecutive "warmest month on record" and 2016 has broken the record for the lowest amount of Arctic sea ice ever recorded.  Which record was set in 2015, which broke the record in 2014, which broke the record in 2013, and so on and so forth.

But do go on, Mr. Ebell, about how the warming is nothing to worry about.

[image courtesy of NASA]

Then for Secretary of the Interior there's Forrest Lucas, CEO and co-founder of the petroleum products company Lucas Oil.  Lucas is not only a virulent climate-change denier, he's battled the federal government over the Endangered Species Act and been an outspoken advocate of opening up federal parklands for oil and gas drilling.  This is the man being considered to run the branch of the federal government in charge of protecting our natural resources?

Of course, he might be okay compared to the other choice, which is Sarah Palin.  I try my best to be charitable, but Palin is not only a nightmare on environmental issues, she might be the most aggressively stupid person ever to hold public office (the only ones giving her a run for her money are Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann).  The idea of putting our country's environmental health in the hands of someone who has almost certainly never read anything longer than the back of a cereal box is profoundly frightening.

And the outlandish weather keeps on happening around us, and we keep on sitting on our hands.  The day of the presidential election there was near-record rainfall on the island of Longyearbyen, which only is bizarre once you realize that Longyearbyen is 800 miles from the North Pole and it's the middle of the Arctic winter.

Okay, that's weather, not climate; a one-off, maybe?  Take a look at a study released this week from the University of Florida showing that 80% of the ecosystems studied are already showing effects from climate change.  "Some people didn’t expect this level of change for decades," said co-author James Watson, of the University of Queensland in Australia.  "The impacts of climate change are being felt with no ecosystem on Earth being spared."

The climate change deniers have characterized the scientists as being alarmists, and for the most part the public has bought that perception.  Part of it comes from our unwillingness to admit that there's a problem, because then it becomes incumbent upon us to do something about it.  Part comes from the fact that anything we could do about it would require a serious reworking of our society to lessen its dependence on fossil fuels, and that's pretty uncomfortable to consider.  The reality is, however, that scientists are the most cautious of people; they usually don't go public with information until they're absolutely sure, until their data has been checked and cross-checked and rechecked, because there's a high likelihood that if they jump the gun they'll get caught out and have to publish a retraction.  (Note the difference from politics, where you can pretty much say any fucking thing you want and no one bats an eye.)

So it's a little horrifying when scientists actually do start sound like alarmists, because at that point, we damn sure better sit up and take notice.  Which makes the report that came out just yesterday even more appalling; because it said that we may have already passed the point of no return, that it could be -- their words, mind you, not mine -- "game over for the planet."

"The results of the study demonstrate that unabated human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are likely to push Earth’s climate out of the envelope of temperature conditions that have prevailed for the last 784,000 years," said study co-author, Tobias Friedrich of the University of Hawaii.  "The only way out is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible."

Which, given the current slate of picks for filling government offices, is looking increasingly unlikely.

Taking time for gratitude

I'm going to take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to share something personal.

My first year of teaching Critical Thinking, when I felt very much like I was sort of making the curriculum up as I went along, I had a student in my class named Tamila.  When I saw her name on my class list the first day of school, I had that momentary "oh, no" feeling that all teachers can relate to.  Tamila had a reputation as a tough kid, a hardass, someone with an explosive temper and little tolerance for frustration.  My first few days with that class, I found that my fears were somewhat unfounded; she had a bit of a swagger, some bluster in her mannerisms, but was well-spoken and intelligent, and didn't seem to be walking in with a chip on her shoulder.  Still, she didn't say much in class discussions at first, just sat in the back listening and watching me with intense blue eyes that you got the feeling didn't miss much.

As time went on, Tamila began to open up.  First she started raising her hand, contributing to  discussions, asking questions, challenging what other students said.  It was always in a respectful fashion, and added a tremendous amount to the class.  She shared with us that she had been raised in poverty, and was able to explain in an articulate fashion how that changed her perspective.  She started coming in early (the class was right after lunch) and bringing her lunch along, so we could chat about stuff -- sometimes trivia, sometimes important things, and more than once because she was still thinking about what we'd talked about in class the previous day.

Toward the end of the semester, I assigned the final project, which was for students to write a personal essay explaining how their thinking had evolved over the previous months.  I thought it was a good opportunity for students to do a little self-reflection, consider how their own thought processes worked and why they believed what they did.

Tamila's essay had me in tears.  She told me how through twelve years of schooling, it had never seemed important what she thought -- that in class after class, teachers had simply told her information and expected her to recite it back a couple of weeks later.  Then you get the grade, then you go on to the next course.  Critical Thinking, she said, was the first time anyone had ever truly valued her opinion, and (more importantly) shown her that her opinions had value.  The course had, she told me, given her the confidence to think on her own, and the knowledge that she could figure stuff out when she needed to.

Right after the course ended, though, Tamila took a serious downturn.  She got pretty close to hitting bottom.  I lost touch with her -- I sent her a couple of emails asking how she was doing, but never got an answer.  It was about four years later that I ran into her, quite by accident, at a local restaurant where she'd just gotten hired on the wait staff.  She came up to me with a big grin, gave me a hug, and told me that she was doing well, had been drug and alcohol free for a year, and was optimistic about her future.  We became Facebook friends, and I enjoyed seeing her updates -- frequently about her passion, which was fishing.

A couple of months ago she sent me an email saying that she still remembered Critical Thinking and all of the discussions we'd had about issues large and small.  I responded that I still treasured her final essay -- that it was, to this day, one of the best and most heartfelt ones I'd ever seen.  She responded with a string of emoji smiley-faces and hearts and said that meant an incredible amount to her.

That was the last time I chatted with her.  And yesterday I found out that two days ago, Tamila was killed in an automobile accident.

I'm not posting this to garner sympathy for my own loss of a friend, nor to bring anyone to tears (heaven knows I've shed more than enough since I found out).  It's more to say how thankful I am that I had the opportunity to tell Tamila how much her friendship meant to me, how glad I was that I'd had the opportunity to be her teacher.  She was a young woman who I doubt heard that from very many people, either during high school or afterwards.  That I had the chance to let her know that I still remembered her with great fondness is something I will always be grateful for.

So I'll end this by encouraging you all not to put off telling the people you care about that you love them.  It's almost a cliché to say that you don't know how much time you have left, but it's also the honest truth, and I think we all need to carpe the absolute hell out of every diem we have.  Tamila told me once that I had truly changed her life, and my grief over her death is coupled with a deep gratitude that she also changed mine.

So take the time to be kind and loving and appreciative of the people you see every day.  As for me, I need to close this, because I'm having a hard time seeing the keyboard.

Change of heart

So another election has come and gone, and most of us on both sides of the aisle are more or less recovering from the shock of the results.  I've been known to make some strong political statements in the past -- yesterday's post being a case in point -- but there's a part of me that sometimes wonders why I bother.  I have the sense that those posts are, in essence, futile.  All such ranting does is to make half of the people who see it shout "Yeah!  Exactly!  Right on!" and the other half mumble "Damn ijit."

So it was with great interest that I read a study just released two days ago by the Pew Research Group showing that in fact, some minds are changed by what shows up on social media... just not very many.

According to a survey conducted this summer of over ten thousand U.S. adults, 20% of social media users said that they have had their opinion swayed by something they've seen posted.  Conservative Republicans were the least likely to change (13%) and liberal Democrats the most (25%), which is perhaps unsurprising given two things -- studies have shown that conservatives have a greater desire for certainty and intolerance of ambiguity, and that conservatives tend to have a greater distrust of media in general than do liberals.

Still, it surprised me that so many people report changing an opinion.  We tend to surround ourselves, both on social media and in real life, with people who think like us -- the so-called "echo chamber" effect -- so a lot of us don't get presented with well-thought-out opposing opinions in any case.  But respondents on the Pew survey report being swayed on some pretty important issues.  Here is just a small sampling of responses:

• Black lives matter vs. All lives matter: I’m white. Initially, I saw nothing wrong with saying "All lives matter" – because all lives do matter. Through social media I’ve seen many explanations of why that statement is actually dismissive of the current problem of black lives seeming to matter less than others and my views have changed.
• My view on the police has dramatically changed after being faced with case after case of police violence especially against communities of color.
• More pro-gun laws now due to statistics presented in specialized social media presentations of gun laws elsewhere in the world and their effect on public violence.
• I would say that I’m for a harder approach on immigration after reading social media.

I don't know about you, but I find this fairly heartening.  The cynical side of me -- never very deeply buried -- has been reinforced considerably by the posturing and snarling I've seen during this election cycle, in some cases by people who previously I had considered to be thoughtful and tolerant.  It's good to know that my pessimism may, in some cases, be unwarranted.  20% may not seem like a lot, but it does attest to a level of flexibility that I had not anticipated.

Nice, sometimes, to find myself in that 20% -- induced to change my mind, in this case with regards to a rather dismal view of my fellow humans.

Buyer's remorse

What I'm about to say has very little to do with conservative ideals.  I have no quarrel with people over their vision of how to make our country run well, whether or not they agree with me.  Honestly, I don't even like discussing politics.  I find that most political discussions come down either to topics that are so unbelievably complex that there probably isn't a solution (like how to keep the economy strong) or ones that are so self-evident that I truly don't understand how anyone can argue about them (such as whether LGBT people should have the same rights that the rest of us have).  So I'm not here to discuss the pros and cons of the conservative platform.

I am, however, speaking to conservative voters.  Because you have just elected to the most powerful office in the country a xenophobic, misogynistic, petulant toddler of a man whose response to being challenged is to throw a tantrum.  I don't at this point care whether he calls himself a conservative or calls himself a liberal, because he is an inveterate liar who will do anything and say anything to prop up his overinflated ego.  If you take a look at what he's said, it's honestly impossible to tell where he stands, because all he truly cares about is achieving and retaining power.  At the same time, his own view is that he's always right -- about everything.  "I think apologizing’s a great thing, but you have to be wrong," he said in an interview with Jimmy Fallon.  "I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I’m ever wrong.”

The man you have just handed the nuclear codes, the man who will appoint the next justices of the Supreme Court and thus shape policy for years, is the single least qualified candidate I've seen in my 56 years on this planet.  He knows nothing about running a country, and yet because he played into your fears and your anger you gave him your vote.  He appealed to the worst and most divisive tendencies in our country, convinced you that the best way to solve our differences is to bluster and sputter, to blame those who are different and ridicule those who disagree with you, and you found that so appealing that you were willing to put him in the White House.

This, to you, is making America great again.

By and large, you call yourselves "values voters," so you voted for a man who said about himself "nobody respects women more than I do," and yet also said, "You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass."  Who said, "You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them.  It’s like a magnet.  Just kiss.  I don’t even wait.  And when you’re a star, they let you do it.  You can do anything.  Grab them by the pussy."

Bafflingly, the same man who cannot conceive that he is wrong about anything is the man who won the lion's share of the evangelical vote, despite making statements that run so counter to the Christian ideal of sinfulness and redemption that he comes off sounding more like Pontius Pilate than he does like Jesus. "I'm not sure I have ever asked God's forgiveness," he told the Family Leadership Conference earlier this year.  "I don't bring God into that picture... When I go to church and when I drink my little wine and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of forgiveness.  I do that as often as I can because I feel cleansed."

He told you what you wanted to hear -- that America is going down the tubes, that our economy is tanking, that unemployment and crime are up -- and you believed him without bothering to check to see if any of that is true.  At the same time, he convinced you that one of the biggest actual problems we currently face -- climate change -- is a "hoax invented by the Chinese."  And once again, you bought the spin, the distortions, the outright lies.

The man who has his hands on the biggest arsenal the world has ever seen is the same man who asked in an interview three times, "Why can't I use nuclear weapons?"  Who said that Vladimir Putin was "not going to go into the Ukraine" after he already had.  Who claims he's going to stop ISIS, push back the Chinese, restore jobs to the U.S.,  and prevent terrorist attacks despite having no actual plans for how he's going to accomplish any of that.  When Fox News's Greta van Susteren pressed him for details on how he planned to combat ISIS, for example, he said he wasn't going to tell her, but it would be a "method of defeating them quickly and effectively and having total victory."  And that, apparently, was enough for you.  What, doesn't it matter to you whether he actually understands foreign policy, all that matters is that he tells you "America is #1" and "We're gonna win?"  This is a government, not a fucking high school football game.

A dear friend of mine was in tears last night watching the results, not because the candidate she'd voted for lost, but because "this is going to result in innocent people dying.  This isn't right."  Having an explosive-tempered, erratic compulsive liar who shows every sign of being an egomaniacal sociopath in the most powerful position on Earth is profoundly terrifying.  And I would be saying that whether he was a Democrat or a Republican, whether he was liberal or conservative.  Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to lead.  He has gotten where he is by playing to our worst character traits, by enflaming our prejudices, fears, and bigotry.  It's no great surprise that he was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.  Most of his talking points come straight from their playbook.

I hold out hope that you will realize at some point what you have done, that when he actually starts to act, you'll have the same kind of buyer's remorse that the Brexit voters had when they saw the result of their vote and thought, "Holy shit, what have we done?"  The problem is that like with Brexit, by the time this happens, it will be too late.  Now all we can do is hold our breaths for the next four years and hope that whatever damage he does is reversible, that our comeuppance won't cost too many dollars, too many job, too many lives.  At the moment, however, I can't even begin to think about that.  I'm too busy being heartsick and afraid for my own country.

Non-prophet

It's a phenomenon I've comment upon before; the mystifying fact that self-styled prophets, who claim to have a direct pipeline to god, continue to have a following even when they're repeatedly wrong.

I mean, it'd make sense if once somebody proclaims "God told me such-and-so," and the opposite of "such-and-so" ends up happening, that people would say, "Oh.  I guess he was lying about speaking with the divine word."  But no.  Charismatic preachers like Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, and Jimmy Swaggart have repeatedly made claims that are supposed to come directly from the heavenly throne -- most of which have to do with us unbelievers being smote (smitten?  smot? smoot?  I've never been entirely sure how to conjugate that verb) -- and none of them ever come true.  Their followers are, as far as I've seen, not discouraged by this.

The latest contender for the False Prophets Lifetime Achievement Award is Lance Wallnau, author, speaker, and "spiritual guide," who started out his losing streak by claiming that god told him that the Cleveland Indians were going to win the World Series because Cleveland was the host for the Republican National Convention while Chicago is President Obama's home town, and (of course) god approves of Republicans while the Democrats are naughty in his sight.

Of course, the problem is that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.  Wallnau was undaunted, however, and posted a new spin on the situation, saying that he "was initially concerned that a Chicago vs. Cleveland contest may be symbolic of the Republican convention (Cleveland) vs Democratic Obama machine (Chicago)... but flip this situation around and see that the underdog won on a progressive field. (The Cleveland field is owned by Progressive Insurance.)"

Which leaves only one question, which is: what?

I mean, I'm not really expecting Wallnau to make sense, but as an explanation for why he fucked up, it's pretty bizarre.  And because there's no ridiculous statement that you can't make more ridiculous if you just keep talking, Wallnau went ahead and made things worse by making a series of further claims:

• The Cubs winning the World Series is actually a positive message from god, because the last time the Cubs won was 1908, which was the same year as the Azusa Street Revival that founded the Pentecostal Movement.  (Which is made somewhat less impressive by the fact that Azusa Street happened in 1906, not 1908.)
• The Cubs' victory represents the breaking of the "Curse of the Bambino," which was the work of Satan himself.  (Whether it's Satanic in origin or not, the Curse of the Bambino has to do with the Red Sox, not the Cubs.)
• If Trump wins, he'll be 70 years old when he's inaugurated, which is significant because "70 is exactly the number of years since Israel became a nation."  Which is problematic from the standpoint that 2017 minus 1948 is 69, not 70.

But other than that, his prophecies are absolutely spot-on.

Despite all of this, Wallnau is enthusiastic.  His sources say that the "curse over America is breaking and a fresh wind is blowing," and that that the church’s “long-standing losing streak is coming to an end."  He says that 2016 is "going to be the year of God reversing the curse … God pouring out his spirit."

But based on his previous predictions, I wouldn't hold my breath about any of that.

So anyhow.  I guess we'll find out whether his prediction of Trump winning the presidency is correct within a few hours, assuming that there isn't some repeat of the 2000 election nightmare wherein we had to keep our sanity somehow while enduring interminable counts, recounts, suits, and countersuits.  It's bad enough that the elections here in this country start a full two years early; the idea that it could go on for months after the polls close today makes me want to move to Costa Rica.  In either case, though, I'll make a prediction of my own; whether or not Trump wins, Wallnau will continue claiming that he has direct access to the knowledge of god -- and his followers will continue to believe him.