Donald Trump’s presidency was worryingly first predicted in July 1920
In ten days time, on 20th January 2017, the world will watch in horror as a reality television “star” is sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America.
Bizarrely, this was predicted in July 1920 by H. L. Mencken, a journalist known as the ‘Sage of Baltimore’, in a column for the city’s Evening Sun newspaper. He wrote:
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre – the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
Mencken plainly foresaw the Presidency of Donald Trump and he equally surmised how Twitter would play its part in his rise. America has ditched reason and its chosen deviousness and mediocrity. God help us all.