The Beat of Black Wings

Earl Fowler

Been thinking about the butterfly effect lately.

You know. That simple concept from chaos theory illustrating how a small, seemingly insignificant action can lead to vast and unpredictable consequences over time.

The term was popularized by meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1960s when he suggested that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas several weeks later, given the right conditions: i.e., a surging series of minor weather perturbations that build into a major storm if all the dominoes fall into place.

While not meant to be taken literally, the butterfly effect symbolizes the sensitive dependence on initial conditions — where minor changes in a system’s starting point can dramatically influence its outcome. Au fond, it’s simply an illustration of how contingent everything is.

In environmental science, the butterfly effect is evident in ecosystems. The introduction or removal of a single species — such as wolves in Yellowstone National Park — can cause ripple effects that transform the entire landscape, influencing animal populations, plant growth and even river patterns.

But the butterfly effect is equally applicable to the complicated affairs of humanity.

For example, I met my wife more than 40 years ago at a party I was dragged to by a friend. I went reluctantly, only because he was leaving for China the next day. If I’d stayed home and watched a hockey game on TV as planned, my wife and I likely never would have met and the trajectory of our lives would have been entirely different. (If only, I hear a desperate voice muttering from the peanut gallery in the next room.)

Similarly, our interactions with others would have been different — and that would have changed their lives. Their children never would have played with ours, never would have later married to produce our grandchildren. And so on and so on, until the whole course of world history would have been altered.

Not persuaded? Take a more salient real-world example of the butterfly effect: the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. This single event, triggered (literally) by a relatively small group of individuals, led to a cascade of alliances being activated, ultimately resulting in the First World War. The war reshaped global politics, led to the fall of empires and created conditions that contributed to the Second World War, the Cold War and everything since.

Another example is the invention of the internet. Initially developed for military communication, its widespread adoption has transformed nearly every aspect of modern life, from commerce and education to politics and personal relationships. A decision made decades ago by a small group of researchers now affects billions of people daily. It’s affecting you as you read this.

These examples underscore the core idea of the butterfly effect: small, often overlooked events or decisions can have far-reaching consequences, reminding us of the complex and interconnected nature of our world.

The other day, I came across a lulu I hadn’t considered while enjoying former Vanity Fair grandee Graydon Carter’s entertaining memoir When The Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines, one of 2025’s juicier non-fiction reads.

Carter, a Canadian, was a co-creator in the 1980s of the satirical monthly magazine Spy, which relished getting under the skin of high society muckety-mucks like Donald Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, by publishing deliciously acerbic articles exposing their foibles and misdeeds. The magazine’s penchant for sophomoric humour included assigning such epithets to its subjects as “antique Republican pen-holder Bob Dole”, “churlish dwarf billionaire Laurence Tisch”, “dynastic misstep La Toya Jackson” and “short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump.”

I don’t think there’s ever been a more pithy description of the Big Orange Sleaze now running the world into the dirt, which was based on Carter’s observation that the slick New York developer’s hands were tiny for a man his size.

(Marco Rubio, now a sycophantic lickspittle whose outsized presidential ambitions dwarf whatever sense of shame he still possesses, riffed on this back in 2016 when running against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination: “He is taller than me, he’s like 6’2”, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2. Have you seen his hands? And you know what they say about men with small hands … you can’t trust them.”

Pornographic paramour Stormy Daniels, who would know, presumably, has described the “shortcomings” of the man she calls Tiny as “smaller than average” but “not freakishly small.” Just to be clear, she wasn’t talking about all the president’s semen.)

But I digress. This is the part that got me thinking about the butterfly effect while reading When The Going Was Good:

And then, of course, there was Donald Trump. In 1983, Art Cooper, the editor of GQ, had asked me if I was interested in writing a story on him for the magazine. I wasn’t, but I needed the money, so I agreed to do it.

Trump was at the beginning of his florid tabloid residency, and since this was going to be his first major bit of national exposure, he let me hang around with him for three weeks. He hated the story when it came out. The piece portrayed him as an outerborough sharpie with taste that veered toward the showy and the vulgar. And worse, I made the observation that his hands were a bit too small for his body. He was on the cover, and as I later discovered, wanted to keep GQ away from as many of his fellow New Yorkers as possible, so he had his staff go out and buy up copies on the newsstands.

Years later, Si (Newhouse, heir to the substantial magazine and media business whose properties included Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker via Condé Nast as well the Random House imprint and publishing group) told me that it was the brisk sales of the Trump GQ cover that led him to urge Random House to publish Trump’s ghostwritten The Art of the Deal, which led to the reality TV show The Apprentice, which led to where we are now.

And that’s how a third-rate devil, no class, got his wings. A series of unfortunate events culminating in the ultimate butterfly defect. The bell tolls for we.