Do you see any parallels between Trump's presidency and the Mule character in Asimov's Foundation series?

OK, this is a little obscure, and you have to have read the Foundation series for this to make any sense.

Remember that the premise of the books is that the future of civilization can, in a broad way, be calculated mathematically by predicting trends of actions made by large numbers of people in the civilization.

This works pretty well until an intelligent mutant comes along (the Mule) – and the Mule wasn’t addressed in the mathematical calculations, and therefore throws off the future predictions.

Where I see the parallels:

- the US was generally moving along in more-or-less predictable ways for the last 50 years or so.

- Trump is the analog of the Mule – sort of the wild card that no one accounted for. (except Trump doesn’t have the overwhelming intelligence of the Mule)

- In the books, the Mule tries to shape civilization according to his vision, with a certain amount of revenge and hatred for the existing leadership and historical trends. Trump wants to “drain the swamp” of the establishment.

- In the books, the Mule has a fear, which guides his actions, of the Second Foundation. He spends much of his time in the later chapters trying to find the Second Foundation, and ultimately fails. Trump is trying to find the “deep state”.

The good news is that the aberration – the Mule – eventually dies and the long-term historical plan (Seldon plan) is not affected seriously. We don’t know yet about what will happen post-Trump.

If you accept my parallels, that suggests sort of an optimistic outlook that the world will recover from the mutant actions of our unexpected president.