Why Trump Won - It really should be no surprise

Note: This has nothing to do with policy. I am not defending any political party or candidate, but I am offering a reasonable explanation. I don't care to hear about your political persuasion.

We can look back to Ancient Greece for clues that Trump's victory was all but inevitable. In the days of Plato and Aristotle, a group of scholars called the Sophists opened private schools where they promised to teach people to be effective, persuasive communicators. They were masters of the art of Rhetoric, and taught that a speaker who used emotion, logic, and credibility would be very effective.

Looking at the election, Trump had a clear advantage over Hillary on emotion. His events were boisterous and the crowds were excited.

Hillary, with her experience, should have won on logic, but she got away from that and tried to focus on criticizing Trump. In doing so, she turned away from her strength in logic, while Trump focused on policy down the stretch. Another advantage for Trump.

Credibility was the most interesting. No one will deny that Trump has said crass, inappropriate things for years. However, the Democrats, in once arguing that "character didn't matter" in support of Bill Clinton and his actions, could not really argue too forcibly against Trump's words. Trump's campaign never let up on on Hilary's email scandal, and the criticism started to stick. Most polls showed that the clear majority of American believed that she was dishonest. So, this amounts to another advantage for Trump.

This gives Trump an advantage on emotion, logic, and credibility. Add to this the effectiveness of his slogan, which we all know, and it really should not be a surprise that Trump won.

In Ancient Greece, the Sophists were not always popular, but they did not care. They claimed, and proved, that they could take any side in any argument and win. They also said that they could convince any audience of the truth as they defined it.

Now, which candidate from the election does this sound like?

Moving forward with my writing and Anabar

It has been several years since I worked on my writing, but I am happy to be restarting this effort. I have revised my books Anabar's Run and Anabar Rises and have big plans for the coming year.

I made the most significant changes to Anabar's Run. The main change was to totally rewrite the beginning. I cut out roughly the first ten pages and started with an action scene when Anabar gets caught in an avalanche. I think this is a much better introduction to Anabar and his story.

I have also proofread both books and believe they are now much tighter and clearer. I enjoyed reviewing the books again and really think they are much better overall and that readers will enjoy them.

Another change will be to focus my marketing on Middle Grade readers. Maybe this comes from now teaching sixth grade English, but Anabar's story seems most suited to those readers. Twitter seems like the best social media resource for this, so I will try to reach people through it.

I also look forward to adding more to my Anabar Series Blog. The first thing will be to create a secret code with some clues and use it to occasionally post some messages from the book and other that I will create for readers. I have high hopes for my blog and think kids will really like it if they just check it out. Ultimately, I hope it leads to more sales, but I will be happy if kids just enjoy checking it out.

So there it is. A new start for Anabar and me! Finally, once I get the marketing effort going, I will start writing book three of the series, tentatively titled Anabar's Night. I plan to place some really difficult challenges in front of Anabar and look forward to seeing how he handles them.

Will Granger