As the year 2017 comes to a close, it is worth looking back at what we have seen and what we have learned:

• United States is a country with an unserious population.

Despite Trump’s  un-presidential antics, the apocalypse that many feared has not arrived. Despite supposedly serious people screaming that Trump and his supporters are Nazi’s, that “our democracy is at risk”, and that those who aid Trump are “complicit”, concentration camps a have not been set up (some were already in place a year after Hitler took power). In addition, anti-Trump journalists are not being beaten up, jailed, or made to mysteriously disappear. What we have is that the type of fear and hysteria that was promoted in obscure places on the right during the Obama years (especially at the beginning), is now playing out from a left-wing perspective on the pages and airwaves of mainstream news organizations. If you strip away the Trump Twitter-account, the Trump agenda is largely a mainstream Republican agenda; most of which would likely be pursued by a Republican President of any stripe. The fact that the Republican Party controls, in full or in part, more than 40 states means that a Republican Party that was “threat to democracy” would have reshaped large swaths of the country in ways that would make the country physically unsafe for certain groups of people in same way that the West Bank and Gaza are not safe for Jews or Americans. And this fact would be well-known and out in the open (no so-called “dog-whistles”). The fact that one side of the political spectrum has an image such as this about the other sides means that the U.S. is not guided by seriousness.

• At least part (if not most) of the permanent U.S. government has been politicized.

From massive government leaks to apparent hiding (or outright destruction) of evidence, parts of the U.S. government appear to be above the law and above congressional oversight. And unfortunately, as of right now, it appears that the politics all runs in the same direction. It seems that the permanent bureaucracy has decided that Trump cannot be allowed to govern, and is doing everything it can to undermine and/or destroy him. While one can certainly argue with wisdom of various policies, the fact that he won an election in prescribed manner means that he should be allowed to govern within the bounds set by the Constitution. The fact that unelected bureaucrats are taking it upon themselves to frustrate that means that a large part of the country has no hope of ever seeing policies that they want enacted, even if they win elections. Fortunately, it does not yet appear that this has been widely realized yet. When it eventually is, the permanent U.S. government can expect to find that it has lost legitimacy and the support of a large part (perhaps half) of the U.S. population.

• Brexit, that thing that couldn’t be allowed to happen, appears to be going ahead.

In the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote in 2016, there were dreams that the referendum results could be overturned. Some ideas floated were to just ignore the results and declare that the referendum was an advisory one and not legally binding after the fact, to overturn it in parliament, overturn it in the courts, or to have another referendum to overturn the first one. None of these things have been successful and the divorce negotiations with the E.U. seem to be moving forward (albeit with stumbles). The catastrophic economic collapse that was predicted would happen if Brexit was approved has not happened.

The Lesson?

That things that are unthinkable can actually happen.

• That a chaotic Washington is not necessarily an impediment to stock market growth.

As it became clear on election night that Donald Trump was going to be the next President of the United States, stock market future completely tanked. New York Times columnist (and Nobel Prize-winning economist) Paul Krugman predicted that the stock market would not recover for the duration of the Trump Presidency. While the Trump tenure has been chaotic as many feared it would be, the stock market is up more than 20% during that period. While there are legitimate concerns that the market is currently overvalued and overdue for a substantial correction, the fact remains that the market has done what it has done with seeming chaos swirling around it. Furthermore, the Trump Administration does in fact seem to be more business-friendly in that bad news for the Trump economic agenda seems to result in a down day for the market, while good news for the agenda seems to translate to a good day for the market. While the President isn’t the guider of the market and a recession or a market correction (both likely to occur within the next 3 years no matter who was/is in the Oval Office) will be pinned on Trump, the fact is that either Washington doesn’t matter as much to the market as it thinks it does, or Trump’s agenda is perceived to be good for business both by those economic desperate people who voted for Trump and those Wall Street titans who may or may not have done so.

Overall, what we have learned in 2017 is that the world is changing and that things are not likely to turn out well for the United States as it currently exists. A country with an unserious population and a politicized civil service is not a politically or socially stable combination over the long-run. In addition, a country that discovers that it can thrive without Washington is one that will not long cease to question why we should bother paying taxes to it or be governed by it. Furthermore, in both the U.S. and Britain, there are those in high places that don’t really believe in respecting a democratic result unless it is a result that they personally approve of. While the system in the U.K. seems to be respecting (at least grudgingly) the will of the voters and moving towards the result approved, the jury is still out on the United States. One thing is for sure. Disrespecting half of your population (largely the tax paying half) and making it difficult/to impossible for them to govern when they win elections is not going to result in a happy society that rolls on being the most powerful country in the world, generation after generation.

2017 was an eye-opener. 2018 is likely to bring even more surprises.