Another turning of Trump's peak-and-slump cycle

Well you all are freaking out again over Trump slumping in the polls, like it hasn't happened before, and like he didn't recover each time.

I pointed out the rhythm of the cycle of Trump support back in mid-June, when he was coming out of the last slump:

At the rate things are going, it seems like there's a month-up and month-down rhythm to the campaign. Peaks occur in the early part of an odd-numbered month, and slumps early in even-numbered months. Fortunately, the election will be held in the early part of an odd-numbered month, favoring the apparent rhythm, although it also predicts a slump during the Republican National Convention in late July. We'll see.

That was based on relative slumps in early February ("Two Corinthians," Iowa caucus), early April (war on women, Wisconsin primary), and early June (La Raza judge, no harm in primaries since he'd already won the nom). Relative peaks were in early March (Super Tuesday I and II) and early May (Indiana primary, locked up the nom). We just saw rising support in the first part of July.

And right on schedule, starting in late July (7/28) and now into early August, he's going through another slump. The two best polls are the USC Dornsife tracking poll (descendant of the RAND poll, a top performer from 2012), and the People's Pundit Daily tracking poll. Regardless of where you think Trump and Clinton are individually, it's clear that their relative standing has narrowed since last week.

Because this fits the earlier prediction about when there would be peaks and slumps, we don't have to attribute this slump to a post-convention bump for Hillary. After her convention, she basically recovered to where she was before, since her convention was so contentious (DNC Wikileaks, DNC Chairwoman resigning, Bernie boo'd by his own delegates for telling them to elect Crooked Hillary, boring speakers, etc.).

We also don't have to attribute it to the Khans -- the narrowing began on 7/28, whereas Khan didn't put on his act until that evening. Trump has more or less not addressed the issue at all, has not "taken the bait," and has been focusing strictly on his main themes since then. And he hasn't made any other gaffes in the past week.

So, while the last time we could have explained the slump by him pushing the La Raza judge case, and the one before that to various "war on women" topics (Michelle Fields, abortion controversy, tweeting ugly pic of Lyin' Ted's psycho wife), this time there is no clear culprit.

"Media firestorm" won't do either, since the media has been constantly railing against him. After the Orlando shooting, they railed on him for renewing talk about the Muslim ban, about gun control, about using the phrase "the gays," Anderson Cooper ambushing FL Attorney General and Trump surrogate Pam Bondi for not supporting gay marriage, and so on and so forth. And yet that didn't stop Trump from climbing out of his slump and heading toward his peak during the Dem convention.

If anything, it looks like the media are reacting to changes in the popular mood. If they sense support wavering, they smell a vulnerable target and pounce. If they sense rising support for a long time, they retreat and stay halfway neutral for awhile -- like Morning Joe covering the GOP convention fairly for a change.

The media, rather than driving public opinion, are more like opportunists chasing after ratings. When Trump is rising, they dial down their attacks. When he's slumping, they unload. They have no spine and no honor, so they aren't about to lead a sustained charge when they're facing increasing resistance from the public. Media treatment is a passive, lagging indicator of what's going on in his popular support levels.

That isn't to say that they treat him fairly at any time -- only that they treat him relatively less biased when his support is rising, and more biased when his support is falling.

So what is driving this cycle? I think it's just a nervous group of voters who are eventually going to vote Trump, but since it is such a risky novelty, get cold feet, then warm back up to him, feel they've gotten over-excited, then cool off again, etc. The USC poll shows women and people aged 65+ as the most variable -- other demographic groups are either more or less constant, or vary by small magnitudes. Women are more risk-averse than men, and old people are more reluctant to embrace radical change.

(Trump consistently leads with ages 65+, but this support rises and falls by large magnitudes, and since the electorate is skewed toward the old, this strongly affects his overall rise and fall.)

I trust that, like the other times, this slump will be followed by another rise. If the rhythm holds, I predict that the VP debate and the 1st and 2nd Pres debates will unfortunately fall in relative slumps (late odd month, early even month) -- again, regardless of how he and Pence actually perform. The nervous parts of the electorate will be going through a jittery phase, no matter what is happening.

Luckily, though, the final debate is toward the end of an even month, and the election itself is in an early odd month -- both of them ending on favorable conditions.

Buckle up -- it is going to be, as always, a bumpy ride toward victory!

Crimea is Russian, and saber rattling over it will launch nuclear WWIII

Now that the Democrats are becoming the warmongering party, with the neocon ball-and-chain shackled to their ankles for a change, we're hearing more rhetoric in the Establishment media about why we need to stand off against Russia, as though the Cold War were still in full effect.

Since their main charge relates to Crimea, it's worth it for us Americans to understand some basic facts about that region. The short and skinny of it is that Crimea has always belonged to Russia, and was internally transferred to Ukraine in 1954 when both were part of the larger USSR. With the rise of nationalism in Russia during the 21st century, they have taken back their long-held region, which is not only strategically important but a cornerstone of their national identity.

For a more detailed discussion, see this post by Peter Turchin, which uses the example to illustrate a more general theory about why nations behave the way they do -- they are not only rational calculators, but also honor-driven protectors of their sacred places. Key excerpts follow.

On the historical importance of Crimea in Russia:

Consider the Crimean city of Sevastopol, home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Initially this port was just a convenient naval base that allowed Russia to project power into the surrounding region. Because of this geopolitical value, the city played a key role during the Crimean War of 1853-1856, when Russia fought Britain and France for the right to expand into the waning Ottoman Empire. This first ‘heroic defence’ of Sevastopol left a significant imprint on Russia’s collective psyche; not least Leo Tolstoy’s important early work, Sevastopol Sketches (1855).

The second ‘heroic defence’ of the port came in 1941-42, during the war against Nazi Germany. Indeed, the siege of Sevastopol remains only slightly less resonant for Russians than the more famous Siege of Leningrad. But it is climbing the rankings. In the midst of the present conflict, Russia designated Sevastopol a city of federal significance, a status it shares only with Moscow and St Petersburg, the city formerly known as Leningrad. As we watch, Sevastopol is being woven ever more tightly into Russia’s national mythology.

On the Russian transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, and its recent fate:

If Crimea is so precious, one might wonder why Russia ever let it go. The simple answer is that it didn’t mean to. In 1954, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to Ukraine as an essentially symbolic gesture. Ukraine was then a Soviet imperial possession, so this seemed an innocuous arrangement. Then, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia itself started fragmenting. Chechnya achieved de facto independence. In a more peaceful fashion, Tatarstan was acquiring greater autonomy. There was talk of the Far East seceding. Crimea, in short, was not the priority.

Such periods of disintegration generally end in one of two ways. Russia rallied. During the 1990s and 2000s, it gradually squeezed out its pro-Western liberal elite, though not before they had almost halved GDP, created extreme differentials of wealth, and lost Russia its Great Power status. With the liberals in disgrace, a new, nationalistic cadre seized the moment. Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, Russia began to claw back its lost lands, beginning, in 1999, with the reconquest of Chechnya. And now here we are.

On the uniform support in Russia for taking back Crimea:

All parties represented in the Duma (Russian Parliament) are solidly behind Putin. In the Duma vote, 445 votes were for the annexation with only one against. It was hardly surprising that Putin’s party, United Russia, supported him. But the other three parties, Just Russia, the Liberal Democrats and even the Communists, were also solidly behind him. That is less usual.

Even more importantly, the general population overwhelmingly supports Putin on this issue. In a large sociological study that polled almost 50,000 Russians, more than 90 per cent said that they wanted Crimea to become part of Russia. Only 5 per cent were opposed. Putin’s policy of ‘reunification with Crimea’ is extremely popular. His approval ratings soared from an already high 60 per cent to 76 per cent. Sociologists such as Alexander Oslon, of the Public Opinion Foundation, and Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who studies Russian elites, say they have never before seen such a degree of unity on any issue in Russia.

On the unlikeliness of Russia giving up Crimea again:

Judging by the polls, Putin and his people are of one mind over Crimea. As I write this essay, it seems that little short of an all-out war, risking the use of nuclear weapons, could dislodge Russia’s grip from the peninsula. Not even the most punitive economic sanctions would do the job: by their nature, sacred values trump material considerations, which is what makes conflicts over sacred values so intractable. Consider the case of Jerusalem: the Temple Mount is sacred both to Jews and to Muslims, and neither is willing to give it up. Luckily, the Crimean case is different. Crimea is not sacred for the Americans or western Europeans. It is scarcely more so for the Ukrainians.

In American terms, imagine if California gave the Bay Area and northern CA to Oregon as a gift. Then suppose that California and Oregon separated into two independent nations. Don't you think California would want the Bay Area back? It was the site of the earliest Spanish missions, the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s, and Silicon Valley. Aside from the economic importance, this role in shaping California's historical identity would guarantee that it would be taken back in the event that it was donated to a fellow state that then broke off into a separate nation.

Allowing ourselves to get swept up into a phony outrage over Russia taking back its historical region of Crimea would march us closer to nuclear WWIII, so every effort must be made to prevent the Wall Street warmonger Hillary Clinton from taking office, and making sure that the Russia-neutral Trump can steer us clear of mutually assured destruction.

No convention bump for Hillary's alienating and irrelevant campaign

During the most tone-deaf major campaign ever run, it comes as no surprise to see that Hillary's polls are flat or declining, even as her convention has taken over the mass media.

According to tracking polls from both Reuters and USC / LA Times, Trump's convention boost had begun the weekend before the event was even gaveled in. After its end, his numbers are holding still or increasing, rather than it being a fluke.

The "history-making" coronation of Clinton, on the other hand, has only seen a slowing in her rate of descent -- still falling, but not in free-fall as she was last week. But there are still two more days for her to alienate and anger normal Americans, so let's not count out another precipitous drop after her big speech.

Here are the Reuters and USC graphs (Reuters always underestimates Trump's true standing, but the trend is still clear).

How much cash do you think Team Hillary has been pouring into her convention, compared to Trump's? And yet what does she have to show for it? Still sagging polls. Turns out that having an order of magnitude "advantage" in spending money and employing staff doesn't mean jack squat if it's all pointed in the wrong direction.

I really, really hope that her big speech is a 50-minute version of her nerve-grating commercial about "How will innocent Mexican kindergarteners FEEL when they hear President Trump say that Mexican rapists and drug dealers are invading our country?" There could not be a more tone-deaf and mawkish harangue of ordinary Americans on behalf of America-corroding forces.

Boo's tonight when Bernie endorses Clinton and Kaine

In case you weren't going to tune in to the very boring Democrat Convention tonight, you must at least catch Bernie Sanders, who will give a unity speech making the case for Clinton -- and who will get immediately booed by hundreds of Bernie delegates during primetime TV.

This afternoon, he gave a stump speech to his Convention delegates -- not just random fans -- and got around to saying they have to "defeat Donald Trump" (no cheers), "And... elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine!"

When he said their names, the entire group of several thousand erupted in a thunder of boo's for at least 10 full seconds. They were mostly angry at who their nominees were, but I also sensed some anger at Bernie himself for so bald-facedly selling out and shilling for Crooked Hillary. After the boo's died down, they started chanting "Feel the Bern!"

Expect something similar to happen tonight when he mentions the names of Clinton and Kaine. Perhaps the delegates will be warned in the meantime not to boo, but the Bernie people have already claimed one scalp today (Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has been fired as chair of the DNC and now won't even address or gavel in the Convention).

Emboldened by the revelations coming out of the DNC email scandal (Wikileaks), they have tasted blood and are out for revenge after getting screwed time and again at the platform and rules committee meetings, where the populist demands were voted down by the Establishment delegates.

The only way Bernie could try to head off boo's is by using a generic circumlocution, like "We have to elect the Democrats" or "our party's nominees," rather than their personal names or distinctive titles ("Madame Secretary").

I think even that would elicit boo's, though not as loud, from the Sanders supporters. And it would probably anger the Clintonites, who might interpret it as trying to weasel out of the endorsement, rather than an attempt to calm down the Sanders delegates. So they might join in the boo-ing, too.

With this afternoon's speech coming so close to his primetime address, it looks like that will be the form his endorsement takes -- using both of their full names, which stings even more keenly than a generic reminder of Bernie having lost.

I hope they take it to the level of chanting "sell-out!" as he sanctimoniously lectures his populist supporters about why they need to vote for Crooked Hillary Clinton. But at least we can expect a good deal of primetime boo-ing for the party's nominee, unlike the boo-ing of the marginalized loser at the Republican Convention.

Landslide: Trump now up 49-33 on West Coast (Reuters)

In the mother of all Convention bumps, Trump is now polling at 49-33 among residents of the Far West region in the Reuters tracking poll. This graph shows the results from May 1 through July 22, and look at how sharp the rise has been over the past week (click to enlarge):

Trump has risen from roughly 10% to 50%, as Crooked Hillary plummets from roughly 60% to 30%. And generally Reuters tends to underestimate how well Trump does against Clinton, compared to other polls.

Only catch -- these respondents include unregistered / unlikely voters as well as registered and likely voters. Among registered or likely voters, Clinton is still up 25-30 points, although that itself is quite a narrowing from just before the Convention.

If the campaign and volunteer groups can spend the next several months finding these disaffected voters, registering them, and staying in touch to get out the vote on Election Day, the Trump movement can win back the historically deep red states of the Pacific, before the culture wars turned them off during the 1990s.

California has one of the lowest turnout rates in the nation, so it should not be hard to find disaffected voters there -- spin around and throw a stone. With its 55 electoral votes, California cannot be written off, especially when we're exploding in popularity after the Convention. They appreciate the drama and spectacle of showbiz! Can you imagine how boring, conformist, and pro-Establishment the Dems' Convention is going to be, especially when they see Bernie reduced to toadie status before Her Royal Highness?

Oregon had Trump up 42-40 in mid-May, so that would be the easiest place to convert.

Washington would be more difficult, but between blue-collar populism, bettering IT workers by ending work visa abuse, non-interventionist foreign policy, and helping Bernie / Greens to drive voters away from Crooked Hillary (perhaps just staying home), there just might be a "grungers and Microsoft" coalition for Trump.

I'm not plugged into the campaign or political orgs of any kind. If you are or know someone who is, get the word out and let's mobilize the West Coast for Trump! Landslide = mandate!

Trump not trying to win minorities and gays, but whites and straights who care about them

The key theme behind Trump's epic acceptance speech was that he was going to fight for and protect all Americans from whatever it is that's throwing their world outta whack.

The media are incredulous, wondering why Trump is bothering to go after the black vote or the gay vote.

Unlike most politicians, however, he didn't address the various groups directly and try to win over their vote, as though it were a quid pro quo. He didn't put on a show about how "I feel your pain" to blacks who are out of the labor force because massive immigration has competed them out of the job market. Or to the gays, "I know how devastated you all must feel, but vote for me, and I'll protect you from Islamic terrorists who would attack your dance clubs."

Instead he spoke about them in the third person, as though his target audience didn't include many blacks or gays. Well, of course it doesn't -- gays make up only 1% of the electorate, and blacks have been members of the Democrat coalition since the 1960s.

Who is he really addressing, then? It's heterosexual people who put "concern for the gays" somewhere on their list of Really Important Political Goals. They are the ones who launched the gay marriage movement, who supported it among the electorate, and who are OK with it passing in the courts. The 1-2% of the population that's gay is not powerful enough to have done that all on their own, let alone in the span of one decade.

Likewise, when he talks about black unemployment and turmoil in black cities, he's addressing white people who put "concern for the blacks" on their list. If only blacks themselves were behind Black Lives Matter, there wouldn't be the kind of growing lawlessness that we're seeing. It's the white Minnesotans who are importing Somalis by the boatload out of "concern for the Africans". And it was their white Governor who came out and whipped the blacks up into a fury about how Philando Castile was shot by a racist cop (who was Mexican anyway).

If blacks were the primary demographic source of turning a state Democrat, then the South would still be Democrat. Those states have the highest percentages of blacks, all of whom vote Democrat, yet Southern states are solid Republican. And New England is deep blue, despite not having any blacks around to cast votes for Democrats. That difference is between white Southerners and white Yankees.

Aside from New England, the reliably blue states are those with intermediate levels of non-whites, where they're not like a second population (as in the Deep South, where they might be 20-40%), but where there's enough of them and in a confined area like a certain spot in a certain city (unlike the South where they range all over the geography). This makes the non-white population more like a pet zoo that the whites take care of.

Where there are no blacks, they're out of sight and out of mind. Where there are 40% blacks, why worry about them when there's enough of them to make up their own second society? But when there's 15% blacks, and they all live in five neighborhoods across only three cities, then whites adopt the mindset of "black community management," and are concerned for how government policies will help to manage black communities.

These are states like Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado (with Hispanics), and so on. They are blue not because their black populations are so large (they're not), but because a big chunk of white voters in the state are concerned about the welfare of blacks and are voting on behalf of blacks, or as "allies of blacks" -- not necessarily as a single-issue thing, but as part of their broader list of liberal concerns.

This assessment is supported by recent data on the 2012 election, which shows that voters were a lot whiter than the experts had thought. It's white liberals who make so many states blue, not the non-white population.

That's even more stark for gay voters, who couldn't swing the vote in any state. It's straight people who are either pro-gay marriage or anti, that determines whether a state is red or blue.

Trump is therefore trying to peel off white liberals who are concerned about the welfare of blacks and gays, as part of his broader campaign to undo or sidestep identity politics. Black voters want someone who will feel their pain, be their symbolic presence in office, and so on. Trump is not offering that, so he won't be winning over much of them.

But white liberals aren't black themselves, and think of "the welfare of blacks" in more material and utilitarian terms, rather than symbolic, identity, and emotional terms. White liberals are at least open to the argument that importing massive numbers of immigrants, on top of the tens of millions who are already here, is bad for blacks because of lower-skilled labor market competition.

In material terms, competition from immigrants pushes black citizens further into poverty, and drives them out of entire cities when they can no longer afford rent, after losing out in the labor market.

That's not to mention the ethnic conflicts that erupt between Mexicans and blacks, with Mexican gangs ethnically cleansing the black hold-outs in formerly all-black neighborhoods out West.

The same goes for gays. Trump is not offering them feel-good identity politics, a la "We accept your way of life and want you to feel welcomed". He's offering them protection from gay-targeted violence, which will appeal to white liberals who view "what's good for the gays" as physical well-being rather than emotional stuff.

Certainly some white liberals share the symbolic and emotional view that blacks and gays themselves have. But there's a decent chunk of white liberals for whom "concern for _____" is a utilitarian matter.

Re-framing "concern for blacks" in material rather than symbolic terms will take a long time, because it's a paradigm shift away from identity politics. But that's what it meant back in the New Deal and Great Society eras, and the re-alignment under way now is a rejection of identity politics in favor of material concerns.

Peeling off white liberals will be harder than tapping into disaffected voters, since liberals tend to already affiliate so much with Democrats. Still, Trump only needs a decent enough share of them, in a certain number of states, to go over the top.

Re-framing "concern for blacks, etc." as a dispassionate concern to protect all groups of Americans, with whom the leader does not necessarily identify, let alone pander to, could convince enough white liberals to vote Trump when the alternative is the cynical panderer who will import hordes of immigrants who will impoverish blacks further and make gays the target of Islamic terrorists.

Cruz betrayal unifying all Americans, not just Republicans

Donald Trump Jr. was only half-joking when he said he'd never seen the party more unified than when they were collectively boo-ing Lyin' Ted for weaseling out of the pledge to support the nominee.

No doubt that party unity played a major role in deciding to set him up, not to mention neutralizing Cruz's 2020 campaign from the get-go.

But it's really all stripes of Americans who are feeling strangely unified while vicariously joining in the audience boo-ing the weasel, and laughing uncontrollably afterward from schadenfreude. Who on Earth could not identify with these feelings?

Obviously not the shills on CNN panels, but over at MSNBC no one could hide how giggly they felt. Even the liberals were swept up in the ecstasy of watching the ultimate smartass getting wasted by a firing squad on live TV.

Here's the progressive Young Turks reacting live:



They're eating it up, too, unable to help but resonate with the Trump army. Even Ana Kasparian, who's usually a total sourpuss, was wearing a bright-eyed smile from ear to ear.

This is going to be one of those "Where were you when...?" moments that unifies the entire country when people reflect back on it. Dialing up the emotional energy so high from such a resounding chorus of boo's, is going to leave an indelible impression on the mind of anyone who saw it.

We're high on victory, and it's not even the end of the Convention yet. Better yet, the rest of the country is already sharing in that victory high -- and if they want to feel another Trump victory rush, they're going to have to vote for him again in the fall. We got 'em hooked!

Ted Cruz's tone-deaf pandering to the gays

In his cosplay Presidential speech seeking bipartisan healing on hot-button social issues, Lyin' Ted trotted out one whopper of a line:

"Whether you are gay or straight, the Bill of Rights protects the rights of all of us to live according to our conscience."

Somehow I doubt that either liberals or conservatives think of gay sex as "living according to their conscience" -- as though it was their conscience that compelled the homos to jam their tongue up another guy's butt and suck out a mouthful of AIDS.

The phrase he was angling for was "to live according to our preferences / what makes us feel good" -- which is what actually motivates gay sex, but then that sounds too permissive of degeneracy.

By going the extra mile in tone-deaf "middle way" pandering, Cruz must be staging a last-minute audition to be Crooked Hillary's running mate.

Generational cycles in ethnic conflict

In the last post, we saw that blacks act out against police as a form of anti-white resentment, instead of anti-authoritarianism as some naive civil libertarian types may believe. The take-home message was that to get to a more pacified police force, there needs to be a minimum of strife between demographic groups -- particularly different ethnic groups.

Shutting off immigration and repatriating illegals would go a long way to preventing future ethnic conflict, so restricting immigration ought to be a top priority for anyone who wants to eventually de-militarize the police.

But what about ethnic conflict involving those who will be staying here, like blacks? As in the 1960s, they are in the process of escalating collective violence against white people as a monolithic group, where the police are targeted for being the armed guards of the real group of interest (white people).

Unlike Mexican illegals, we're not going to be able to ship blacks out of the country in order to prevent the growth of ethnic conflicts in the future.

I think the only thing that's going to change the minds of blacks is to witness and experience a massive crackdown on their criminals. Race relations were generally amicable during the Great Compression because there were widespread race riots targeting blacks circa 1920, and neither side wanted to go through that ever again.

Sadly, once the next generation had not experienced the nadir of race relations, they were naive about how bad things could get by pushing black vs. white resentment. They would grow up to be the Civil Rights generation, which would plunge the nation back into a lawless and therefore heavy-handed police state circa 1970.

The people who experienced that most recent nadir during their formative years -- the Boomers -- are generally wary of stoking black vs. white tensions. Even if they're liberals, and even if they're black, they don't want another Watts Riot, or another assassination campaign against today's MLK, Malcolm X, and so on. They feel that chaos to be an embarrassing stain on the liberal banner, and they want to avoid promoting liberalism in a way that would only further stain it with an association of widespread ethnic conflict.

However, Gen X-ers and Millennials are too young to remember the ethnic explosions of the late '60s and early '70s, so they don't apply the brakes when they sense race relations moving in a more hostile direction. Especially the Millennials, who are too young to even remember the L.A. Riots of 1992, which was a relatively minor and isolated case compared to the conflagration of the 1960s.

Peter Turchin has found that outbursts of collective political violence appear in cycles of roughly 50 years. If the last peak was 1970, then we're due for another one in the near future -- caused by naive and reckless Millennial blacks who have no idea what they're about to bring down upon themselves in response.

Only after that will race relations improve, and the police force will moderate more in the Mayberry direction. Until that happens, though, it will be counter-productive to push hard for the de-militarization of police on "citizens first" grounds. Right now the zeitgeist is not about citizens vs. the state, but one ethnic group vs. another.

This is a cyclical solution whose dynamics largely play out on their own, not a permanent solution that can be carried out willfully like a repatriation of illegal immigrants. Although there will be recurring waves of collective black vs. white conflict, at least there are 50 years in between peaks, and at least the de-escalation happens more or less "on its own" at the grassroots level and does not require social engineering.

A more permanent solution would take the form of segregating blacks and whites at the regional level within the country, so that they had their own contiguous region and we had ours. For example, they could take the lowland Deep South where the highest concentration of blacks has existed since they first were brought there as slaves.

I'm not convinced that this regional separation would actually prevent ethnic conflict like sending the Mexicans back to Mexico. Blacks vs. white conflict would just take the form of a region vs. region conflict, like Northerners vs. Southerners. It may be that we're going to have widespread black vs. white conflict once every 50 years, and that what we need to work on is not preventing it but preparing for and dampening its effects when we know stormy weather is looming on the horizon.