Denouement

The denouement, or the final outcome of the story, comes after the climax has happened. It is the resolution to the plot in a complicated work of fiction. As in Hamlet, everyone dies. Or do they?

We “elected” Donald J. Trump to the office of the President in November 2016. Throughout most of election night, it appeared that Hillary Clinton was on the path toward becoming the country’s first female president. Then, starting around 9:00 P.M., Pacific Standard Time, returns from Pennsylvania started coming in. What looked like a solid victory for Clinton — she was ahead of Trump by three million popular votes — began to shred. Slowly but surely, a district here, a district there in Pennsylvania turned red. The same held true in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. By the end of the counting, Clinton was ahead by about 2.9 million votes, but due to our absurd Electoral College system she had only 227 electoral votes to Trump’s 304.

And so, the 45th President of the United States took office, inaugurated under cloudy, rainy skies, to dramatically-underwhelmed crowds about whose attendance number Trump lied, the first in a succession of well over 10,000 documented prevarications during his tenancy in the White House.

The turnover in the White House has been spectacular. If this pattern occurred in a company, the CEO would be terminated by the board of directors for managerial…