Gwynne Dyer predicts "President Pence"

Gwynne Dyer is a Canadian-born journalist and military historian, based nowadays in London. His columns are syndicated across Canada and the USA, and in an astonishing number of foreign (non-North American) papers, including the Wanganui (New Zealand) Chronicle. His books include Ignorant Armies: Sliding into War in Iraq (2003) and The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq (2007), both best-sellers. He also wrote all of which were number one or number two on the Globe & Mail’s non-fiction best-seller list.

Mr Dyer also wrote Crawling from the Wreckage (2010), which, according to his website, "traces the world's halting emergence from the dark tunnel of the past decade, a time marked by exaggerated fears of terrorism, futile and unnecessary wars in the Middle East, neglect of climate change, and financial near-collapse." Seven years later, the uncharacteristic optimism of that book suggests that the author either had his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, or had lost his touch in predicting the future.

Walt thinks that Mr Dyer, a confirmed liberal, had drunk too much of the Obama Koolaid. Still, his track record since then has been pretty good, which is why I still read his columns regularly, taking his predictions with only a couple of grains of salt. Today I saw (in the aforementioned Wanganui Chronicle, "Still not the smoking gun", in which Mr Dyer analyzes the latest episode of the Russia-helped-elect-Trump saga.

As the headline of his column suggests, Mr Dyer think that the junior Trump's revelation of his meeting with Russian lawyer and lobbyist Natalia Veselnitskaya is still not the "smoking gun" which will lead to the impeachment of the senior Trump. As Mr Dyer puts it, "The dead will continue to walk around for a while yet." But wait (as Vince Offer used to say), there's more.... SPOILER AHEAD!!!

Although Mr Dyer doesn't think President Trump will be impeached, he feels that Mr Trump, who some time ago stopped having fun in his new office, will get bored enduring the death of 1000 cuts, and will resign. Then, he says, we will get... President Pence. Thus endeth the column. I can only add, "'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."