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Odd Thoughts: Game sets fools on the throne

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They have set themselves against Daenerys Targaryen and her cobbled alliance of states from the East.

Jon Snow and Sansa Stark have sided with the Wildlings from beyond The Wall, and they’ve made it clear that their paramount concern is to protect the North.

Winter is coming.

Arya is coming!

And not even the despicable Lannisters can save them, because the great irony is that Game of Thrones itself may be in jeopardy, as it is produced under an umbrella of the European Union.

While there is still faint hope that the folks north of Hadrian’s Wall might be able to hold the line, Brexit may have laid waste to Westeros and the Iron Throne.

The analogy continues.

Brexit’s lessons go beyond Game of Thrones, beyond the United Kingdom, beyond the EU.

Brexit offers an educational glimpse into what may lie ahead for the United States, where Donald Trump’s astonishing run for the presidency mirrors the campaign of lies, exaggerations, obfuscations, and manipulations that proved so successful for Nigel Farage’s Brexit battle with the downed Remain camp.

First and foremost, Americans should note that certainty in politics is never certain. In fact, quite the opposite: the more certain you are that something is impossible, the more possible it becomes. And no one seemed more certainly impossible than President Trump just a few months ago.

The Remainers were left shocked at the referendum outcome – and many didn’t even bother voting – because democracy is built on ordinary people.

And that, folks, is a feeble foundation.

Abraham Lincoln famously said, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

But Farage and Trump both know it’s not always all that hard to fool enough people long enough.

P.T. Barnum knew it, too: you can always find people who want to be fooled.

Farage used bigotry, ignorance, and wishful thinking to win enough people over long enough to exact a Brexit decision that many already regret.

While Trump has been on the stump longer than Farage and still has months to go, it seems “enough” may be a much easier number in America.

But if The Donald succeeds as well as Farage did, the UK’s failure will look like a bonfire beside a nuclear holocaust.