You don’t actually have to watch a horror movie to know what’s happening; the music alone will tell you roughly what’s going on. The same is true of historical documentaries. With the advantage of hindsight, it’s easy to show how and why disaster was imminent in 1914, and 1929, and 1939.
The real world isn’t like that; life doesn’t come with a soundtrack. If it did, Franz Ferdinand would have known better than to go to Sarajevo.
I can’t hear cellos groaning in the background, but I’m worried about what I see, and I’m not the only one. The cover of this week’s Economist features a mushroom cloud with the faces of Kim and Trump and the caption “It Could Happen.” New York Magazine has an article about how Trump could turn things around with a war. These are topics that I write about all the time.
Very few things in life are inevitable. I hope I’m wrong. I just don’t think I am.