When I was a little child, Edgar the Eskimo lived in our kitchen. I never saw the small guy myself, but evidently, he was only half an inch taller and Pretty thirsty. For some odd reason, Edgar may only speak to Uncle Wally: My mother would say anything like,” Aah! Who drank all 50 beverages next day”? and Uncle Wally did whisper, “Edgar the Eskimo did. Leave me alone, woman” and drop up to sleep on the couch.
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Yeah, we never saw Edgar once after Uncle Wally suddenly passed away from heart failure at the age of 27.
The reason I’m sharing this terrible ( and deeply personal ) family story is to illustrate a larger point: Unexpected, crazy behavior keeps people on their freakin ‘ feet.
Politics is a lot like Racing: You’re never gonna get if you crash your car. Just surviving the race unharmed is much of a problem, which is why most politicians are thus risk-averse: They’ve previously made it! They’re now winners! But why Rock the Casbah and risk losing everything they worked so hard for in a flaming disaster?
Regularity. Reliability.
That’s the beauty of techniques: Prices may increase and products may develop, but numbers are continuous. Two issues equal one point plus one more thing. That was genuine a million years ago, it’s real now, and it’ll also be true a million years in the future.
Different tasks attract different kinds of characters. A man who wants to work as a Navy SEAL is unique from a man who wants to work as a beautician. Some work attract leaders and thrill-seekers, some repel them.
Individuals attracted to a job in technology believe in the power of predictable, reliable systems. Random, disorganized behavior frightens them.
Social advertising is almost 100 % algorithm-based: Mark Zuckerberg has pretty precise formulas for evaluating Social use. He is aware that when the typical person visits his website for XX hours, it generates$ Y in ad revenue. He is well-versed in the information that is most likely to elicit your response. And he knows the “warning indicators” that a person is on the verge of leaving his society.
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In Mark Zuckerberg’s great world, everything would be measurable. Everything could be expressed statistically.  ,
Because then, whatever would always be repetitive and reliable.
More than 500 years previously, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote that often it’s” a very smart thing to create crazy” because maniacs are unpredictable men. Your adversaries cannot strategize against you because you are unsure of what they are going to do next. President Nixon has reportedly resorted to the Madman Theory to pressure the Soviets, strengthen ties with China, and maintain America’s strength whenever the Cold War gets heated up.
President-elect Donald Trump, who has so thoroughly perfected the Madman Theory, is the most predictably unpredictable politician in modern history. ( C’mon, be honest: How many of y’all had Greenland, the Panama Canal, and the Gulf of America on your Jan. 2025 bingo card? )
For over 500 years, the Madman Theory has primarily been associated with geopolitical warfare. Machiavelli never thought about using it against the big businessmen. However, it’s probably more successful against businesses like Facebook or Google because they’re more prone to market pressures and financial turbulence. The CEO of Meta cannot ignore an army of irate shareholders, but a dictator in China can ignore public opinion and simply fly a tank over a protestor in Tiananmen Square.
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A CEO can be removed from office more easily than a head of state.
The stunning journey of CEOs to Mar-a-Lago is the Madman Theory in action: billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg don’t want to be seen with Trump in real life! They literally kicked the stupid Orange Monster off their platforms while laughing at him with their liberal friends. In an ideal world, Trump would disappear forever, and they could return to an existence of numbers, stats, and predictable algorithms.
But they’re scared of him: If Trump is crazy enough to annex Canada, the Panama Canal, and Greenland … what would stop him from taking MY company?
It’s not just the power of the federal government. Trump’s “bully pulpit” is even larger now than it was in 2016. His followers are more passionate, more devoted than ever before. All he has to do is post a message on social media and BAM: You’re facing a boycott, a collapse in revenue, and you’re in the crosshairs of the maddest of madmen.
Screw that! It’s easier to kiss the brass ring.
Four years ago, the Democrats at least offered an alternative. That’s what their” Opposition” was: They insisted that Trump was offensive, immoral, and un-American and refused to normalize his behavior. The” Opposition” created the illusion of a popular majority because Trump’s first-term poll results were more negative than positive, which is the kind of credibility that only comes from representing the people’s will.
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That was the ruse on which they hung.
But then they lost the 2024 election. It turns out that they’re firmly in the minority.
And their entire argument collapsed.
In 2016, the Madman Theory was akin to bright lights poking through dark clouds: It was visible, but still somewhat obscured. Now, eight years later, the dark, gloomy clouds have vacated the skyline.  ,
Everything’s clear.
For the very first time, we’re witnessing the Madman Theory in all its glory. And the tech industry is the first domino to fall.
But they won’t be the last.
And before his second term is over, perhaps we’ll even learn what the heck happened to Edgar the Eskimo.
