For example, despite the blanket television coverage of the killing 129 Parisians by Islamist terrorists, the average American's chances of ever getting killed by an international terrorist is lower than getting struck by lightning. In fact, Americans statistically have a greater chance of getting killed by disgruntled domestic reactionaries (for example, the shooter at Planned Parenthood) than they do by radical Islamists.

The U.S. political campaign is likewise filled with made-for-TV illusions. Journalists, believing optimistically that political campaigns, and their distorted coverage of them, do matter, focus excessively on the horse race of who's coming on and who's fading rather than on the issues or the underlying forces driving an election. Experts on campaigns in universities focus on these underlying forces.

It is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that the Republicans could win the presidency in 2016, although the last odds in Las Vegas that I saw on the election (a surprisingly good predictor of past elections) had the Democratic candidate 57-43 edge to win.