I was raised in the ghettos of liberal Los Angeles. Most everyone I knew and went to school with were Democratic/left leaning. I was raised in the time of Reagan and Bush with conservative Republican parents (all four of them). So even at a young age my exposure to both sides of the political spectrum was a constant. And from about junior high on I’ve been a political junky. I always wanted to understand the what and the why. I’ve studied politics from all sides most of my life.
At age 20 I joined the US Navy. It was during this six-year journey into the world at large that I truly developed my own understanding, beyond the limits of my LA experience, of the world, politics, religion, ect. I discovered libertarianism and this unknown congressman who would post all of his congressional speeches online named Ron Paul. I couldn’t believe that he was actually a Congressman. I mean who would elect this guy to Congress. He makes too much sense. That rabbit hole led me into a political worldview that is neither Democrat nor Republican. I want what is just and good for everyone. And neither party represents that.
For the last 24 years I have always voted my conscience. The two-party system had become the same party, so it really didn’t matter who wins. And when Ron Paul ran for President in 2008 and 2012 you better believe I voted for him. I still have his 2008 sticker on my jeep. The only politician I’ve openly supported and promoted (and likely the only one I ever will). Yes, I knew he didn’t have a chance in hell of winning, but he earned my vote.
In 2015 a very strange thing happened. The billionaire lifetime Democrat, friend of Hollywood and the liberal left threw in his hat as a Republican Presidential Candidate. At first, I was just entertained because he’s no politician and he was just destroying the ‘conservative’ politicians on the stage. But then he started gaining steam. I predicted he would win the Republican primary long before any thought he would. I also predicted he would beat Hillary in the main election contrary to everything the polls were saying.
I voted for Trump in the 2016 election. It was the first time I voted for a Republican to be President. It’s not that I liked Trump or even thought he was going to do a good job. But he wasn’t really a Republican. The Libertarians put up Gary Johnson (ugh) and I wanted to see what I call the great experiment. I wanted to see a President that wasn’t a politician nor ex-military. We have never had that. And I believed this may be the only chance I would ever get to see it. So, I voted for the experiment because man, I had to see what, if anything would be different.
I’ve never trusted the media, so it wasn’t hard for me to see their bias. But me being me, I always watch various media (you need to know what people you disagree with are saying if you want to understand them). The first two years of Trump’s Presidency was the most amazing shift in politics and media of our lifetime. Never before had the POTUS been the focus of the media daily. This change in journalism changed politics drastically, because suddenly everything was political constantly.
Trump being the media loving guru he is, took Twitter by storm. Something no one in politics had ever done. And he never let up and wielded it like a knife to poke whatever bear he felt like poking. And the media got sucked in and ate it up. The war between the media and the POTUS was something never before seen. And it has endured for four years. And it’s been the most absurd shitshow I never imagined for four years.
That was all there was. And because the media kept the President in our faces constantly, suddenly everyone became a political expert overnight. Politics, which has been my hobby almost 30 years, suddenly was everyone’s forte. And I shifted from being very outspoken politically to being an observer, because quite frankly with all the noise it was simply hard enough just keeping up with the sudden onslaught of data (good, bad, fake and otherwise). It was a very unfamiliar place for me, but it was also the most amazing social experiment ever. And social media fed not only the chaos but exposed the chaos for all to see. All I had to do was sit and watch the show. Watch the greatest social experiment ever unfold before my eyes.
The Republicans floundered because.. well because Trump isn’t a Republican but he won the Presidency on the Republican ticket. The conservatives were torn because Trump offended their sense of propriety and challenged their core views as the leader of their party. They became and still are a party divided. Though I will say in the last 12 months they have shifted to get behind Trump.
The Democrats and the media both quickly realized that politics as usual don’t work with Trump. He simply didn’t care. They started to throw every ‘gotcha’ at him they could thinking with each one they had him, but somehow every time when the dust settled, there he was still standing. And this went on nonstop for the first three years. So, they started changing their tactics. And with each change they peeled away a layer of the political veil of correctness than they had always hidden behind. They, of their own doing, revealed the man behind the curtain.
And so, for four years we have seen what had always been there but had never been out in the open. The nature of true politics. The left bias of the media was solidified, and the dirty tactics of politicians were brought to the forefront in hopes of taking down this man unworthy of the office they all coveted. The staunch conservative right was shown to be built on sand and washed away into an unrecognizable mess.
What I have found so enthralling these past four years is that with all of the ammo Trump provided them to use, they still found it politically expedient to twist everything and make stuff up over and over and over again. I don’t know how many times I thought about what they could have said of substance against Trump rather than the nonsense they were shoveling.
In fact, so much bad information was injected by the media, politicians and social media it became virtually impossible to find the truth anywhere. My hobby of politics became an unimaginably difficult undertaking.
I have done what I always do, which is dig through the noise and try to see what the pertinent data was in each scenario. But the scenarios were coming at a speed that I couldn’t keep up with.
I had to change my strategy. I started to ignore news, media and especially twitter and just focus on policy. It’s the only thing of substance I could keep up with. And what I found astounded me. Trump was deregulating at a rate and in ways I’d never imagined; in ways I never thought I would see from any President. It was a libertarian’s dream. He was actually enforcing immigration laws. He pushed through Congress an actual tax cut. This liberal Democrat was implementing some of the most conservative polices I’d ever seen. WHAT?!?!?!?!? What dystopian Twilight Zone is this?
His foreign police I wasn’t impressed with at all. He was letting his generals run the show and it was business as usual in the middle east. But then he got Russia to the table followed by North Korea. It’s been 70 years since anyone has gotten North Korea to the table. WHAT?!?!?!? Overall I still don’t have much positive to say about his foreign policy other than, he isn’t a blatant warmonger like every other President of the last 50 years.
By the end of his third year in office the domestic economy was booming in a way we haven’t seen in ages. Unemployment was at all time low, wages were up, stocks were up. And I kept waiting for the bubble to burst. Bubbles always burst and in my mind, this was an economic bubble (especially the stock market). But it didn’t.
By mid-year 2019 I predicted, unless there was a major economic crash or some other major catastrophe, Trump would easily win again. American’s historically vote with their wallets and American’s were sitting pretty on Trumps watch. Even the voters of color were shifting in Trumps direction.
At this point I wasn’t sure if I wanted the experiment to continue. But then again it had been an entertaining ride so far. But I always vote my conscience and wanted to see who would be in the field of play. I mean Trump is a bombastic asshole. And I’m a Ron Paul libertarian by heart.
The Democratic debates were in full swing and for me there was one candidate that stood out as principled and a critical thinker. Tulsi Gabbard. I knew she didn’t have a chance, but she got farther than I anticipated. If the left had the wherewithal to nominate a principled candidate, like Tulsi, she would have given Trump a run for his money (just as Bernie would have in 2016 had they not torpedoed his candidacy). You win elections by pulling from the middle, not the fringe and Tusli would have absolutely pulled Republicans / Libertarians to her side. But alas they towed the political line and pushed Biden to the top.
The impeachment was a wash as expected. And so, by January I was pretty confident in my prediction of a Trump win. Then the test of my theory sprung its head and the catastrophe that is COVID-19 reared its head.
In February I said two things. First, I saw the beginning of lockdown and the economic chaos before us and scrapped my predictions because the economic collapse was upon us. Second, I said that if the lock-downs weren’t short, riots were coming.
COVID was big so I dug hard to find the best resources. A 17-year-old kid put together an amazing data website that I used for many months to track trends and figure out for myself what was going on. It’s amazing how much was known early on, yet we continued with the economic destruction anyway. And 8 months later if isn’t clear that this is political, you aren’t paying attention. If this was strictly science policy wouldn’t be divided along red and blue state lines.
Then the riots began. And while I expected them, I didn’t expect the degree and duration. I was in LA during the Rodney King riots. It was a scary time, and everyone was trying to quell it, even Rodney King. What really threw me for a loop was that there were leaders on the left that not only were not trying to quell it, but that were calling it a positive thing. WAIT?!?!? WHAT?!?! Rioting, looting, burning, assault and murder is a good thing? Are they really saying that? Holy shit.
Their hatred of Trumps was so much that they considered it better to watch their cities implode than accept help from the Federal government.
I was laid off in May, so I’ve had a lot of time to pay attention to all the details around COVID 19 and the rioting. Who is doing what? What is saying what? What is really happening?
When Biden nominated Harris (for clearly political reasons, because the lady called him a racist, was destroyed during the primaries, and doesn’t align with Joe on a lot… among other things) it was clear to me that in 2020 the two-party system had chasmed. For the first time since I took up my political hobby as a teenager I could see a massive gap between the two parties.
So, what’s going on here?
The Republicans fractured but then reunited mostly. There are some that couldn’t stand with Trump but for the most part the party has united behind him (who saw that coming?). There has been a defection to the left from some. And rightly so, because the GOP of today is not the GOP of even 3 years ago. However interestingly enough, because Trump is a Democrat, the party as a whole has actually shifted more center. Not something that has happened in a long while. At the ground level it’s harder to measure because even those who support Trump aren’t verbalizing it.
The Democrats (not politicians) are seeing a defection to the right due to the mainstream party embracing what was once extreme views. I’ve talked to countless lifetime Democrats that have told me they just have nothing in common with the current DNC. The ‘walkaway’ movement which is Democrats shifting right to Trump is by contrast very verbal in their reasoning. I truly believe if the DNC was still the party of Mondale or Clinton (Bill not Hillary) they would not be seeing this exodus. But the DNC has shifted so for to the extreme that even stalwart Democrats are cringing.
So, we have a crossover of support both ways. Not something you see often. Actually, if I think about it, I’ve never seen this.
The Democratic party is in full-fledged political mode swaying like a read to position themselves for the votes they want driven by the hatred of Trump. Policies.. yeah, not this elections cycle. Their policy is ‘We hate Trump and WE are not Trump”. The Democratic party has shifted farther left than it’s ever been. So far left that Bernie became a non-issue because he no longer stood out in the crowd of candidates.
This extreme shift is what has caused the chasm. Our two-party system, rather than be essentially a one-party system as it has been for decades, really is a two-party system again. And it has scared me. See if Biden wins, then the 2020 platform of the left wins. The platform that used impeachment as a political tool (very bad for our nation as a whole): the platform that destroyed the economy to ‘keep us safe’ from COVID: the platform that embraced riots as good because it was politically expedient. The left is so desperate to get Trump out that they are willing to burn down the nation (literally and figuratively) if that is what it takes. And leaders that are willing win at all cost are beyond dangerous. The left has demonstrated they are prepared to shred our nation for power.
This is the first election in my life that I believe we are voting for the survival of our nation. I am voting for Trump. I have had many people ask me how I could vote for him. He’s evil, scary, sexist, racist, ect.
Well it’s quite simple really. First the LP put up Jo Jo who is barely a step above Gary Johnson. Quite frankly their political candidates make me not want to be libertarian anymore. Trump isn’t scary to me. If you ignore his rhetoric, he’s mostly harmless. Yes, his persona is just beyond anything I ever imagined from a President, but I don’t elect Presidents for their public image. If public image was my measuring stick, Obama, Reagan, Bush 2, JFK and the like would be my Presidential heroes. And they aren’t. Trump is an irreverent ass. He has thrown the PC book of politics out the window and brought the media and other politicians with him. Whatever you think of his persona, his persona is not his Presidency, his policies are.
In fact his actual policies (not his Twitter account) are quite conservative. I don’t have to like him as a person to know that his polices are good for America. From a strictly domestic policy standpoint, he has been soundly conservative. For me that is the most shocking fact of his entire presidency. Middle class America has thrived under his policies. Poor America has improved. And yes, as everyone points out, wealthy America has grown as well. I would argue that domestically he has been more conservative than any President since Reagan. Once again, am I in the Twilight Zone?
And I am afraid for our nation should / when the left regains control. Mostly because at this point, who knows what their actual policies are. The current nominees sway like reeds in the wind. They have no defined platform, but only lots and lots of talking points that change with the political tide. And this is what makes them dangerous. The political tide of 2020 has been off the charts and the political left have shifted along with them. There are no standards they hold to except follow the tide to power. 2020 and the insanity I’ve seen are why I’m voting for Donald Trump. The destruction of America supported by the left this year has struck a chord of fear in me regarding the future of America. We have been shifting closer and closer to the cliff of empire collapse for decades, but this is the first time I’ve felt we have a party trying to run full speed towards it.
America is an empire. Like all empires it will eventually become fragile and crumble from within. We may be on the edge of that collapse now or we may have miles to go, but I’m certainly not going to deliberately vote for a party that is trying to push us to the cliff of internal collapse. Politicians that have zero principles will follow the river right off the cliff.
And not that all politicians aren’t swayed by the tide of political opinion, but historically they have had certain foundational principles that they would hold to. But today they are holding to nothing but ‘Trump bad’. Everything else is up to change if it means they win.
I believe the fate of the American empire will inevitably follow the fate of all empires. But Lord willing not in my lifetime. You can vote against Trump because you hate his persona, but I’m voting for him because I want America to survive and prosper for my future, my children’s future and my grandchildren’s future. And this is the first election in my lifetime that I think will actually have a significant impact on the path of America’s future. Quite frankly, I don’t want to see the end of America in my lifetime.
**Dan Carlin, whom I greatly respect as one the few honest journalist of my lifetime raised two points to consider.
1) He believes Trump is capable of pushing us to civil war. That is a legitimate fear. But in a time where Ice Cube (the original Fuck The Police gangster) is being lambasted for daring to cross the isle and try to work with the President to better black lives; a time when Democrat supreme Diane Feinstein is lambasted for daring to be civil in the Senate… I think if we are going there, no one can stop it.
2) Nuclear Power ~ he has serious concerns with Trump having the nuclear football. I don’t share that fear as I think his diatribe is the show and his policy is much more controlled and subdued.
That being said, in light of my respect for Carlin, I have given these two points fair considerations.
***I shared this with a friend. She pointed out that from her view, between Trumps persona and Trumps policy, his persona is what stands out as paramount. She feels it is real hostility and real danger, calculated and with nefarious objectives, not just harmless rhetoric as I have stated here. I actually agreed with her, that based upon her understanding of Trump’s persona, to vote for him would be wrong. If she is right than we are hosed no matter who wins.
