There's a scene in No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy's stunning, elegiac murder ballad from 2005, that's as funny as it is tragic. In the far reaches of West Texas, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell takes the measure of a drug deal gone horribly wrong. Quickly surveying the bodies and the bloodshed, he quips, "If it ain't a mess, it'll do till the mess gets here." In light of the events of 2016 – a year marked by coups and celebrity deaths and unexpected elections results around the world – the scene now seems eerily prophetic.
Here at Stratfor, we have spent the past 12 months combing through the mess to tell you what it means and what will happen next. But that's not all we've been doing. Along the way, we have been tirelessly consuming books, films and even video games – sometimes even in our down time. We can't...
