A decade or two into the future, after a tumultuous global climate event called the Change, an island nation (much like England) has built a Wall to protect itself against marauding outsiders, known as the Others. Those charged with protecting the borders, known as the Defenders, must maintain a 24/7 vigilance against attack and penetration. In many ways, it’s a world not all that different from what we know today, except that—as one example—rising waters around the planet have made beaches extinct.

The puzzling “no collusion” finding by Mueller is particularly troubling since this conclusion was apparently reached without any actual interview or sworn testimony by Trump as to, for example, what was going through his mind when he invited the Russians to hack into Hillary Clinton campaign’s database to find her “missing” emails or when he appeared to have advance knowledge of one or more of the WikiLeaks data dumps.

At worst, the discriminatory effects of voter identification laws tend to prove minimal, mainly because their effect on elections overall has proven minimal, despite the intent to push down turnout among groups more likely to vote for one party over the other. These are results that have been repeated in the political science literature: Even though the effect in the short term falls primarily on minorities and the elderly, the overall effect on all but the closest of elections is minimal at best.

In Beautiful Country Burn Again, Fountain revisits the tumultuous 2016 presidential campaign. Interspersed with his vivid, on-the-scene reportage are sections he calls “Book of Days,” a more or less objective compilation of world events taking place in the months leading up to Election Day. (It makes for grim reading.) He also theorizes at length about something he calls The Third Reinvention, addressing—with the hopes of reforming or eliminating—wealth inequality, white supremacy, and damage already inflicted on the democratic system.

The alliance of rich, emerging and poor economies that sealed the Paris climate deal is falling apart. In 2015, the world’s top two emitters, the US and China, joined with Brazil, some small island countries and the European Union, led by Germany, France and the UK, to land the agreement. But climate change politics have shifted significantly since then, with two more big tilts this week. Brazil elected a staunch and radical anti-environmentalist president, while Germany’s Angela Merkel confirmed her exit plans

Part of running a campaign is also acting the part, and actors can be pretty good at that. Celebrities can have more talent in front of audiences, generally; and they may be more apt to deal with scandals more deftly, in part because the public assumes that scandals are simply part of their lives. Reagan himself was a skilled performer who used a combination of theatrics and performance in radio and television pseudo-events to basically play the part of a president. Yet, these same useful assets may prove to be a double-edged sword because celebrity, inevitably, brings scrutiny.

China is a nation that only an idiot would want to get into a trade war with. Because  China buys everything in  immense bulk and it can easily and quickly — in mere weeks, it seems — replace imported American products with those from a dozen other trade partners: in the UK, the EU, Eastern Europe, South America, and Australia. The painful reality is that America needs China as a bulk buyer of its goods far more than China needs the U.S. as a produce supplier.

So could the president be charged with a crime? (Or, as was the case with President Richard Nixon in 1974, be named as an unindicted co-conspirator?) The official line of the Justice Department is that a sitting president cannot be charged. Many lawyers argue that the Constitution’s only relief is impeachment, a charge made by the U.S. House of Representatives which is followed by a trial in the U.S. Senate. Perhaps.

It must be noted that the overall percentage of Latinos who voted for Trump is about 26-29 percent, compared to the Cuban-American vote. This wide gap in the Latino demographic is one that has plagued both major parties as they strive to grab this much desired bloc. If Republicans can claim over half of the Cuban-American vote in a key state like Florida, is there hope yet for a stronger Latino base to lean towards the GOP? After all, as Ronald Reagan infamously quipped, “Hispanics are conservatives; they just don’t know it yet.” 

President Trump (yes, I’m going to call him by the name this time) has picked fights with anyone he can, isolating our country against our allies, aligning him with dictatorial opponents. He wants to be appreciated like Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, asking that people pay as much attention to him as they do to a man he once denigrated as “Little Rocket Man.” At the same time, he picks a fight against our Canadian and Mexican allies, our continental partners, because he is flexing his muscles and making the point that he does not need friends.