To those who look carefully enough, history is poetry. Most often the poem woven by the sands of time looks nebulous at first, only to become clarified later on in hindsight, when the fuller pattern emerges. It is perhaps fitting that Sheldon Adelson passed away just about one week before the fall of his largest political benefactor, U.S. President Donald Trump, from power. The Jewish mourning period of Shiva, literally “Seven” (it’s the same word in both languages actually), ended yesterday for the Adelson family, and Trump now has 24 hours to tie any loose ends and get out of Washington DC.

Coincidentally or not, depending on how you see history, his second most notorious political ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has also fallen on the rocks at about the same time, again, as the Netanyahu government coalition has fallen and the fourth Israeli election in two years will take place in March. When three world titans all fall at the same time, while the entire global economy is so obviously being completely restructured in unprecedented ways, it is hard not to see Adelson’s passing at precisely this time as part of a wider historic transition into something else. What exactly, we do not yet know, but the old world order looks like it’s being swept away. It’s a heavy, dangerous gauntlet to pick up, and whoever raises it is going to have to be sharp, nimble, and most of all humble. None of us know how this is going to end, least of all the people on top.

The damage to Las Vegas Sands over the last three quarters has been absolutely immense. Lockdowns hurt everyone, even and especially the world’s most powerful. It may not seem like that from an individual consumer standpoint. The rich still have their yachts and mansions and all the rest, but consider this. Las Vegas Sands’ retained earnings since inception, representing the amount of value produced by the company in pure profit, has been obliterated by nearly two thirds over just the last three quarters. Two more quarters of this and the amount of money that Sands will have made over the course of its entire history will be less than zero. That’s how quickly the most powerful can fall. Perhaps Adelson has been mercifully spared the worst of it.

It is perhaps also fitting that Adelson, the arch enemy of online gambling, has left this world at precisely the time that online gambling is pretty much the only remaining functional outlet for the industry, while his casinos are being smashed like never before. This is now a world that Adelson perhaps, deep down, no longer really wanted to be a part of. It is very difficult for us to see him as simply an elderly man, the powerhouse that he was, but as most of us are not octogenarian billionaires and most of us never will be, we simply do not know what it’s like to see your empire under attack and your political allies get flushed out and your competitors rise in a world under paralysis.