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That sense of stability is a key asset for Putin as he orchestrates his foreordained victory in the March 15-17 presidential election for a fifth, six-year term.

It has been argued that many paths were possible in the Cambrian, and that the world we ended up with was not foreordained.

The VPC space is now light and airy, with beeswax candles, adorable greeting cards, single-origin chocolate bars and the like also on offer; last Friday, Fleet Foxes played in a way that felt foreordained.

But in recent years, dozens of such governments have instead used courts, with verdicts foreordained, to publicly condemn their ousted adversaries and frighten others into submission.

The futility belonged to the rioters, whose violence and vandalism was an expression of dreampolitik rather than a coup — its plan for success nonexistent, its end in mass arrests and imprisonment foreordained.