With oil prices dropping, someone asked if we should start a “dead pool” for petroleum based tyrannies. Earlier it was reported that the NYT’s shares have been downgraded to “junk” status. When complex systems fall to a lower energy level or experience a large discontinuity, it’s not always easy to see who wins and who loses. It’s easy to forget that a possible Obama victory in November is only one of a real avalanche of interrelated events shaking the globe. This phenomenon is not exactly like the “dense pack”, it’s more like a “swarm”.

How do you move fragile furniture after it’s been sitting in the corner a long time? You lift two sides at once and if it’s really delicate, you pick up all four corners simultaneously. If you think about an Obama victory ceteris paribus it looks like a win for the Left. But if you imagine an Obama administration during a time of economic contraction, of huge governmental expansion and guaranteed foreign instability you get a different picture. It’s like lifting the creaky dresser at one corner while it’s loaded with old wrenches and being pulled in other directions.

It’s not inconceivable that the next six months will see dizzying challenges, spectacular collapses and unprecedented crises. Events will belong to whoever can most rapidly understand and respond to developments which are sure to come. It’s the old story of the reserve. If you don’t know where the crisis will come, form one. If Obama wins, he will be too busy feeding the bureaucracy, Congress, the media and his special interest constituents to move. He’ll be pinned down by himself. Conservatives, if they aren’t mesmerized into simply waiting for 2010 have a potential agility that can’t be matched. But it’s only potential.

When things come thick and fast they either damp each other out or create a sympathetic resonance. If there are any rebels in the Republican Party, the time to unfurl their colors should be the day after the elections, whichever way it goes.