Michael Bérubé Online: "There’s a weird new science-fiction piece by Ron Suskind in today’s New York Times Magazine.  In it, a Messianic madman takes over the United States in a disputed election after a hapless time traveller accidentally crushes a butterfly ballot while hunting for dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period.  Unable to distinguish Sweden from Switzerland (insisting, to one stunned congressman, that Sweden is “the neutral one” that “has no army'), the madman gradually consolidates his power, banishes all those who doubt or question him, and dispatches “senior advisers” to inform the populace that he can bend all of spacetime to his will."