We're in the closing phase of our misguided experiment with representative democracy. Trump, the GoP, Brexit, and so many other inanities, are all merely surface symptoms of a systemic problem for which there is no immediate solution. Populism has swept the globe precisely because ordinary people can't distinguish between mindless entertainment and important serious matters. As we vote for clowns, we should not be surprised when we get chaos as a result. The immediate future - the next hundred years or more - belongs to tyrants because when everything is in chaos, the cynical and truly ruthless claw their way to the top. We must hope that eventually, when everything lies in ruins, a few intelligent people are able to engineer a far better solution to the problem of how we govern ourselves. Until then, however...