I composed this post after the US Presidential election of November 8, 2016; I revised it after the election of November 3, 2020. The general question is of responsibility, as for Clinton’s loss in 2016 or the Democrats’ loss of Congressional seats in 2020. More precisely, the question is not whom to blame, but why. The former question depends on the latter. There is a common belief, retained from childhood experience, that somebody, some power, is going to judge our actions. With regard to this belief, many of us continue to behave as if we are still children, be we obedient or not. Asked, for example, to think of the feelings of Trump supporters after their man’s 2020 loss, some of us reply, “Why should we? Did they ever think of our feelings?” You can ask that of a parent whom you expect to impose fairness; do you think there is such a parent of the world? My investigation of the 2016 election continued in “How to Learn About People.”
“Everything will be fine” is usually correct, but not always.
I wrote my last article, “Happiness,” after the arrests of editors and writers at Turkey’s largest independent newspaper, Cumhuriyet (“Republic”).
A philosophical point buried the article was this: there is no one reason, not even a collection of reasons, why things happen.
Polytropy 