Spoiler Alert:  If you plan on binge watching the final season of “Game of Thrones,”  do not proceed.  Or if you have never watched a single episode of the show, this post will probably make little or no sense.

Proficiency in the use of synchronicity as a tool of imagination requires us  to constantly ask two questions as we interact with our environment.

• What is this trying to tell me?
• How might it be relevant to something I hope to better understand or address?

Sometimes, it takes the intersection of what appears to be two totally unrelated events to bring clarity to the message.  Therefore, as I mentally processed last night’s airing of Season 8, Episode 5 of HBO’s  “Game of Thrones,”  especially the final scene in which Arya Stark surveys the remnants of Kings Landings, it had a ring of familiarity.  Where had I seen this before?  Actually, it was just six days ago.  Episode 1 of HBO’s mini-series, “Chernobyl.”  Everything was the same.  Fire.  Mass destruction. Disfigured bodies.  And the prospect of many more innocent victims who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  What was this trying to tell me?  Why was it important?

What if George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” was not about the rulers of the Seven Kingdoms and dragons, but the leaders of modern day “kingdoms” and nuclear weapons?  Bear with me.  When the dragons first appear, they are solely owned and controlled by Daenerys Targaryen, who believes she is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne from which she will rule the Seven Kingdoms.  Her dragons provide a tactical advantage in times of war and prestige in times of peace.  Sound familiar?  In 1945, the United States was the sole possessor of atomic weapons which it used to its advantage at the end of World War II.   In the same way Harry Truman ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as demonstrations of allied military dominance, Daenerys occasionally employed her dragons to solidify her power and claim to the Iron Throne.

The United States retained the status of sole atomic power until August 1949 when the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear weapons test.  Since then, such armaments have not again been utilized on the battlefield, but have become a symbol of prestige.  Just ask Kim Jung Un.  Yet, as nations increased the destructive power of their nuclear arsenals, the potential for mutual mass destruction has kept a cold nuclear standoff from heating up.  But that strategy only works if those who control the power wield it from a position of sanity, respect and with an understanding of the consequences once the genie is out of the bottle.

And that is where Martin and HBO have taken us in Season 8.  When the White Walkers appropriate one of Daenerys’ dragons for their purpose of eradicating any memory of the past, we see what happens when unlimited capacity to inflict destruction and pain falls into the wrong hands.  Terrifying.  But not as terrifying as what we observed last night.  Daenerys, initially driven by good intentions to become a loved and compassionate ruler, when overcome with grief or a desire to seek revenge against her foes, loses her perspective.

As Daenerys overlooks Kings Landing from her perch on Drogon, the last surviving dragon, you can almost see her thought process.  “What good is a dragon if you can’t use him?”  And use him she did.  And for the second time in a week, HBO reminded us of what can happen when we take the status quo for granted.  No one had an accurate assessment of the damage to life and property of an explosion in a nuclear power plant until it happened at Chernobyl.  Perhaps Martin and HBO recognized there will be no documentarians left to make a similar mini-series about the devastating effects of nuclear warfare after it occurs.  So just maybe, they decided to make one while there was still time and called it, “Game of Thrones.”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Speculation seems to be the order of the day.  So I thought I’d join in.  The question?  Which of the following is most interesting and about which we are least informed?  The contents of the Mueller Report?  Or who is the front runner for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president?  Without any real data–the actual REPORT in the case of the former and VOTES in the latter–pundits are, as Bob Dylan reminds us, just blowing in the wind.  (Query:  Does the noise from political pundits blowing in the wind cause cancer?)

While I have questioned the process by which William Barr has shared information about the Mueller Report with us, I am holding my tongue on the content until I get a chance to read it.  So today, I will take my first shot at coverage of the 2020 race for Democratic nomination.

Since March 31, the emphasis has been on fundraising by the plethora of presidential aspirants.  Much has been made about the a candidate’s total take, the average size of donations and the number of contributors.  This information is readily available as all candidates for federal office must file quarterly campaign financials with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).  Therefore, we can assume the numbers for the first quarter of 2019 are accurate.  Here are the results for the top four fundraisers.

Bernie Sanders/$18.2 million
Kamala Harris/$12.1 million
Beto O’Rourke/$9.4 million
Pete Buttigieg/$7 million

But as my late friend Michie Slaughter used to remind us, “Sometimes the things that are important are hard to measure, and the things that are easy to measure are not important.”

Which brings me to the title of today’s post.  In 1995, Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm saw himself as the heir apparent to Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, saving the country from another four years of Bill Clinton.  He announced his candidacy immediately following the 1994 midterm elections.  In February 1995, Gramm raised $4.1 million ($6.8 million in current dollars) not in one quarter, but at one event, a dinner in Dallas which was billed in the New York Times as “one of the largest takes for a single campaign event in American political history.”  By end of his campaign one year later, Gramm’s campaign had raised and spent a total of $35.81 million ($59.4 million in current dollars).

Since there is no record of President Gramm, you know how the story ends.  What you may be too young to have experienced or too old to recall is that he abandoned his bid for the White House on February 25, 1996, just days after the first Republican votes were cast in Iowa.  Of the 96,762 caucus attendees, Gramm finished fifth with 9,055 or 9.35 percent. He clearly had not cracked the code for a successful run for president. (Historical Footnote:  Is it any surprise a man who spent $3,954 per vote in Iowa, later as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, deregulated the banking industry, an action which was largely responsible for the financial crisis of 2008?)

During a phone call with a relative this week, he asked my opinion of the Democratic candidates.  While I admitted I have no idea who will eventually end up on top, I suggested that Buttigieg was someone to watch.  When asked why, I found it hard to explain.  The closest I came was my reaction to his appearances on CNN, MSNBC and last Friday night on “Real Time with Bill Maher.”  He did not lecture or talk at me.  He did not tell me what was good for me or the country.  He talked about what he believed was important and how he felt about the future.  And his curiosity.  “I cannot help but think what things will be like in 2054 when I am the age of the current incumbent.”  When asked by religious skeptic Maher whether there was a conflict between his pursuit of knowledge and his faith, Mayor Pete replied, “Do you think you’ve figured it all out?  I haven’t.”  Even a devout agnostic can live with that.

Phil Gramm’s campaign had just the opposite experience.  According to the New York Times, “Internal campaign memorandums suggest that even with a huge budget for television commercials, Mr. Gramm had image problems with the voters.”  It became known as the “Yuck” factor, a reference to a story about his wife Wendy’s initial reaction upon meeting her future spouse.

After four years of cringing every time Donald Trump appears on television, maybe all we are looking for is someone with whom we are comfortable.  I have no idea how you measure that.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP