Brexit and Trump are a generational revenge. This may partly be against millennial certainty and superiority, and, indeed, ageism; and it may be a natural part of population dynamics - not only are more people getting far older than ever before, but they are older for longer than they are young.
Donald Trump has been both a peculiar and characteristic American figure for more than three decades. Inheriting a small New York real-estate development company from his father, he parlayed it not so much into a big real-estate company, but himself into a fantasy of a big real-estate developer.
Running for office, or suggesting you might, is no longer about being a politician but being an independent opinion or sensibility entrepreneur. You're looking for an audience to identify with you. Rather than trying to convince a majority of the electorate, you're looking to cull your particular following.
Bill de Blasio, for his part, became the mayor of New York, surely the most powerful local political position in the nation, and arguably - after Giuliani and Bloomberg - one with a national base, one with, practically speaking, no job at all. He went from marginal political flotsam and jetsam to extraordinary centrality within a few months time.
I was born into a Christian family and brought up in a Lutheran church. My faith has been the center point of my life, really, since I was a child, but at 16 years of age, I fully surrendered my life over to Christ. At that point, as a teenager, I began to grasp the concept of Christ's true love and forgiveness.
I'm not only a lawyer, I have a post doctorate degree in federal tax law from William and Mary. I work in serious scholarship and work in the United States federal tax court. My husband and I raised five kids. We've raised 23 foster children. We've applied ourselves to education reform. We started a charter school for at-risk kids.