Predilection for prediction

BC Pires
BC Pires

TO WRITE a startlingly original newspaper column, you’ve got to copy others unashamedly and, in 1999, I stole a great idea from the Miami Herald’s Robert Steinback who, every January, wrote a column making predictions for the coming year and assessing the accuracy of his predictions from the year before.

Since 2011, I have stunned readers with the accuracy of the previous year’s first prediction, as you will now see:

Donald Trump, at the end of his White House squatting, will incite his thuggish supporters to mayhem in the Capitol. Bewilderingly true as to how I could possibly have foreseen that, until you find out I just wrote it down this morning, trusting the short memories of Trinidadians, who, once every five years, elect either the PNM or UNC. Now come my real predictions from last year:

* Boris Johnson will betray Brexit/New Tory voters monstrously and they will cheer him. Completely depressingly accurate.

* Trump will be formally diagnosed with several mental illnesses but the Republicans will oppose his committal until he loses the election. Even in this hyperbolic form, my prediction didn’t go far enough; today, 100-plus Republi-can’t-say-what-they-are-in-a-family-journal members of Congress continue supporting him, even after his bloody, incompetent coup attempt

* Me, my editor, linguist Denis Solomon and two mathematician/pedants will be the only Trinidadians who will know – or care – that 2020 is not the start of a new decade. Correct; but I should have been able to call, last year, that one pedant would be my pardner Alexis.

* Trump will lose in November because (only) hypocritical, calculating Republicans and American Nazis (will vote for him). No matter how ridiculous you make your prediction about this fat firetruck, it never goes far enough; who’d have thought 74 million Americans would qualify under that rubric?

* The Internet of Things will spread to Trinidad, where it will become the Internet of Porn & Thing. Half-right; we have the Internet of Porn here but the Internet of Things isn’t yet a thing; so much for my tech-savvy.

* Trump will leave the G7 and start the G2 “group” of the US and Russia; Vladimir Putin will be elected its leader by two votes to nil. Wrong, but only insofar as the US didn’t formally leave the G7.

* China and India will join forces and control entirely world manufacturing. Wrong, but only because China is too busy repressing Muslims on the continent and everyone in Hong Kong.

* Discernment as an intellectual quality will simply cease – but no one will be able to tell. Do you know, people asked me what I really meant by this prediction?

And here are my predictions for 2021:

* Trump will rename the Grand Old Party the Brand New Robert E Lee Nazis Party to try to stay relevant/stay out of prison; Q-A-Nonsense conspiracy theory will become their manifesto.

* A secretly made recording involving Ivanka Trump will end whatever is left of Fat Hitler’s public life in even more ignominy.

* Things will not return to “normal” this year.

* China will do a Hong Kong version of Tiananmen Square.

* People who voted for Brexit will complain more bitterly about it than Remainers.

* India will emerge from covid economically stronger than any other nation except China.

* The sports world will watch West Indies cricket only in the form of Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard and maybe three other players on world T/20 circuits.

* Sean Hannity will be outed as a gay Muslim transgender imbecile (the imbecile bit will not be a revelation).

* The TT government will open national borders on Carnival Thursday and close them on Ash Wednesday, so the PM’s daughter can have a J’Ouvert in Westmoorings for 300 of her closest friends, flown in and out on a jumbo jet chartered by Caribbean Airlines, each passenger/partygoer bringing ruling-sector pets stranded in Foreign as comfort animals.

* “Patriotic” Trump supporters will murder more people; perhaps as early as next week.

* Vladimir Putin will buy Chelsea from Roman Abramovitch for ten quid and an intercontinental gas pipeline, forcing me to consider, theoretically, modern sport and the Hellenic ideal and turning me, pragmatically, into a Wolves supporter

* There will be a Virtual Road March competition; Machel will win it and;

* Jeff Bezos will pay some tax; grudgingly.

I won’t be able to think of a better way of ending this column than I have for the last 21 years. How could I firetrucking know? I amaze me! This column will end abrup

BC Pires is a never-seer, come-for-seer turned overseer. Read the full version of this column on Saturday at www.BCPires.com

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