Johann Wilhelm Baur: The Ordering of Chaos (c. 1639)

" … an undisciplined eight-year-old ruled by Whim."

The defining element of NextWorld might end up being Whim, our incumbent's impulsive choices. What if there never was a plan, if Project 2025 never influenced a single action by this administration? What if the continuing analysis intending to identify motive and strategic intent amounted to so much wishful imagining? In statistics, sophisticated tests exist to determine if apparent patterns amount to random events or contain potentially useful information. Since we are pattern-seeking organisms, we readily perceive patterns where there might be none. It can be damnably difficult to determine the difference in the real world. We presume strategic intent, whether or not it exists. We imagine that some plan informs action even though much of our own behavior might be best labeled unplanned. But we don't natively seem to perceive randomness, either. We might be incapable of perceiving randomness, especially regarding human events. We might accept that evolution depends upon random iteration without fully appreciating that it influences human events and world history no less.

The booming cottage industry focused on understanding our latest president's behavior never seems to sleep. Each morning, scores of fresh analyses steam atop the residue of the day before's pile. Some seem convinced he must be a Russian asset since so many of his decisions favor our historical opponent. Others find evidence that The Heritage Foundation created the game plan with their Project 2025 agenda. Still, others perceive the evil intent of Elon Musk as the cause of the latest chaos. Our president sure does seem to be easily influenced. He appears to maintain an inflated sense of himself. He seems to believe he really is a stable genius, though few beyond the fawning right-wing press seem to share that assessment. No consensus has yet emerged after six weeks of progressively more probing analysis. Like in his first term, his behavior often appears unpredictable and self-defeating. If any of this was evidence of strategic plotting, the plot line seems too clever for me to follow.

I've concluded that I have been witnessing randomness in action. Yes, I swear that I can see patterns emerging, too, yet whenever I've tried to follow them to find a coherent pattern, I've lost the thread. For every apparent certainty, another anomaly reliably appears. What one might interpret as brilliance another perceives as clear evidence of idiocy. Most emerging either/or seems just as explainable as a both/and, not precisely random, but also lacking definite patterns. Even trying to follow a roadmap of actions drawn retrospectively, the most reliable means for producing a plan, produces another indecipherable abstraction. There might not have ever been any strategic intention. Each action might be best explained as the result of some Whim in action.

I'm reminded of some combination of The Emperor's New Clothes and King Midas, where the leader double-binds himself through eccentric perception and single-minded conviction. The Emperor refused guidance from even his wisest advisors and so ended up parading around in public bare-assed, with the public adequately cowed into appreciative acceptance. The King became so obsessed with wealth that he ultimately turned his darling daughter into cold, hard metal. Neither intended what they produced. Their insistence convinced them they were stable geniuses, and their positional authority muted otherwise wise advisers. Such secrets are not uncommon throughout history, though we never expect to see such psychodrama playing out before us in our time. Such stories rightfully belong to cautionary histories rather than daily newspaper stories. Who suspected that witnessing history unfolding might prove so damnably confusing?

Occam insists that what seems stupid probably is. What appears to be misguided might have never been under any sort of guidance system. Randomness always seems at least somewhat strategic. I do not even know how to process random experiences, let alone how to preserve and store whatever lessons I might glean from them. Without that overlaying pattern, I cannot construct anything like a meaningful classification system for retention and retrieval. I might be destined to continue being a victim of randomness without any hope of ever gaining any future mastery of it. I might find respite by accepting another's logical analysis as believable enough fiction and park my meaning-seekers there. It might not matter whether the story I imprint on actually explains the impulses I witness. It might matter that I manage to settle on some tale to put the more damning irresolution sensations to rest.

Yes, he behaves like an absolute idiot much of the time. Of course, he acts against his own self-interest. Yes, he misrepresents almost every issue he complains about. He does, indeed, appear to be waging an inevitably losing war against common decency. And, yes, he seems to have little difficulty attracting needy supplicants. He's produced the largest number of opponents in the history of the office, a stunning accomplishment if that was the result of conniving intent but less impressive if it was utterly unintended. Remember, randomness might allow anything to happen, even the decidedly irrational. We semi-rational beings struggle to accept non-rational or even irrational as an answer, yet it certainly must exist within any universe of potential explanations. I'm finding some comfort, some resolution, in the most obvious reason of all. We are not dealing with a strategic genius, stabile or otherwise, but more probably an undisciplined eight-year-old ruled by Whim.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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