Watching Trump prevail in the general election of 2016 reminded me of Matias Rust, the young German aeronaut who breached the Iron Curtain at the depth of the Cold War.

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To do this he had to penetrate the most ferociously-defended airspace in history, where thousands of nukes sat on hair triggers and as many as a million soldiers manned the radar screens.

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Bluck was in the air alongside Rust's single-engine Cessna. It was May 28th, a national holiday for the Red Army, who were drunk as landords. The Cessna was mistaken for a flock of geese, then a rescue helicopter, then an oil slick. He reached Red Square hours after city workers had dismantled overhead cables that would have made landing impossible.

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It's difficult to avoid the idea that some greater power was a play; and that power is not supernatural, but bluck, which lies at the heart of the Western quest.

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