Make America Great Again. This is the slogan of Donald Trumps campaign that I have to keep hearing again and again as the 2016 election looms over our heads.
The 2016 election cycle is shaping up to be just like 2012 and 2008 with fewer options and far worse choices across the board.
In 2008 I was working on the Ron Paul Campaign. I got behind Dr. Paul because he was the only candidate that stood out to me who in the very least was telling the truth and had 8-term congressional voting record to back it up. His ideas resonated with me. Talk of limited government, conservative economics and internet neutrality seemed were important matters to me and a lot of other Americans.
Unfortunately, in both those elections, Dr. Paul lost. In fact he didn’t even come close. People would ask me why I was working on a losing campaign, and told me I was throwing my vote away. I simply replied that I was going to get behind and vote for the person I believed was best for the presidency and that I didn’t care about what the news was saying or any of the bullshit you hear from people who only talk politics every 4 years when it’s on the T.V. everyday.
I remember all of the blatant tactics the media used to skew the polls for Dr. Paul, and the last minute changes by the RNC to keep him off the debate stages. I remember Dr. Paul barley won the Ames straw, then won the CPAC straw poll and then when he poled higher in the preliminary debates, FOX News decided just skirt the issue. Below is just one of many videos that outline just a couple of the events that took place.
After watching the Republicans tear themselves apart in the months following and ultimately losing the presidency to Obama for another 4 years, I was convinced that there was no place left in American Politics for anyone that was going to attempt to defy the establishment.
Now without getting all conspiracy theorist on you, I think when we look back at the case of Dr. Paul, most people would agree that the media snuffed him and that his attempts to bring subjects to the light like blowback, foreign intervention, auditing of the FED and the out of control budget deficit were not met with kind regard by the RNC, media and virtually the “establishment” as we know it.
What I learned during this time was that if the establishment (AKA media, RNC, Democrats super PACs etc.) could simply get the message across to the American Public that Ron Paul couldn’t win, then it would come true and it most certainly did.
The most common thing I would hear back in 08 and 12 when speaking and or advocating about Ron Paul was the logic behind the idea that Paul didn’t have a chance to win, therefore I would be throwing my vote away, and hence I am voting for someone else.
Well Clinton and Trump are among the most disliked Candidates to ever run for President according to this poll.
History is repeating itself once again and we are seeing it play out right in front of us with Gary Johnson. In the next couple of weeks I am going to release a series of blogs as these event unfold, and it should get pretty interesting.
Keep this in mind when you are reading these…..
I have voted both republican and democrat evenly since I could vote
I am registered as a democrat currently, but have been registered as a republican, democrat, independent and libertarian in the past.
I usually follow the money and that leads me to the real answers.
So let’s wrap this up. In the last two blogs, I laid some ground work in to some major problems in the political process today. To recap, I bullet point them for you:
3rd Party Candidates don’t stand a chance…. ever, and it sucks!
The Media may be conspiring to stomp out any chance of an alternative candidate getting any air time as we saw in the case of Ron Paul, and Gary Johnson.
Being left with 2 horrible choices isn’t that much better than no choice at all.
The public sphere in general is getting pretty stupid and it’s scary.
So what do we do about it?
As I am finishing this last blog I am currently vacationing in Bali Indonesia. I love traveling and I LOVE Bali. One of the greatest experiences I get to have when I am traveling is running in to people from other parts of the world to get their take on how they perceive American Politics. The other night I was sharing a table at dinner with my Wife, 2 girls from Sweden, a guy from Germany and an Australian dude. The consensus was the Donald Trump is a buffoon, and Hillary Clinton is just down right shady. So, we were in agreement.
The next night while having dinner with my friend Luke and his girlfriend we got in to a long conversation about politics ranging from 1984, to 9/11 conspiracy theories, the Viet Nam War and my experiences traveling to Viet Nam to the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Man city.
This is the point that we all came to. Americans live in a state of irrational fear and the Federal Government has a lot of motivation to keep it that way. This is always apparent in every election, and any time someone, or something is trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
Politicians are professional liars. They say what ever they have to so they can get elected. The funny thing is that generally we all know this and agree that it is true, yet you will her people argue over who said what at some debate as if in 2 months either politician will follow through on any thing they said.
So what should you do? Well, as I told my friend in our conversation last night, I believe that as long as millennials can get the rent paid, get a new iPhone, and have some money left over to get drunk on the weekend, they are going to do shit to change anything. I think people are indifferent, but being indifferent is not going to change anything.
Older folks like my parents who lived through the 60’s understand the importance of voting and a 3rd party, yet in a lot of ways it’s like they forgot about Viet Nam and the Nixon scandals in the 60’s & 70’s because here we are 50 years later in a long drawn out war with plenty of civil and racial unrest to go around and not one likable or redeeming politician in sight who actually has a chance to win.
I am beginning to think that most people just don’t give a shit anymore or they are like me, meaning they will vote their conscious not matter what, say fuck a political party and generally believe that things are probably just going to need to get worse before they get better.
That being said, if you do give a shit, and you are looking for some actionable items to help you decide who to vote for this year, I have provided some bullet points.
Follow the money. If you want to know who the next president is going to be soft on and quick to help out, simply look at who is donating money to their campaign.
You don’t need to pick a side, fuck what your friend said, don’t worry about your liberal college professor, and you can just tune out your parents when they start telling you how great Ronal Regan was. Just form your own opinion and if you feel like you need to change your mind, then do so, it’s a free country.
Finally, the most scary and sinister of all is the repressive desublimination of the public sphere which is more zombified than it has ever been. The only way to combat this is to turn off the news and find your own information. We are getting dangerously close to an idiocrocy generation and the Federal Government is starting to look more and more like Big Brother every day…. Don’t beleive me? Read this and prepare to have your mind BLOWN http://theantimedia.org/george-orwell-1984-came-true/.
Now go out and vote and enjoy this clip from Trump VS. Camacho Debate
Do you remember a time when a 3rd party was included in the debates or even a part of the mainstream political media in our life times? I don’t, I have been able to vote now for 24 years and there has not been one presidential election cycle that has included a 3rd party candidate.
Is this a good thing? Is having less choices better? Fuck no!
In a world where we have virtually any information readily available to us and literally have the choice to buy anything we want and have it delivered to us in 2 days thanks to Amazon.com, the highest office in the greatest country in the free world is boiled down to just 2 people every 4 years.
I mean come on, sure there were some preliminary debates on the blue and red side, but still we are talking like a group of 10 people where only 2 of them are going to make it to the final round.
The process has gotten way past the point of ridiculousness and headed well in to the realm of idiocracy to the degree where committing any amount of brain space and or time to follow the random bullshit that the media churns out or Donald Trumps Twitter feed is about as interesting as watching WWF pro wrestling.
I find that when I am speaking with people one on one about Politics, they really have no idea about what is really going on. For a perfect example of this, check out my buddy Mark Dice (Video Below). Mark does a great job at outlining just how uninformed people are.
Now just to make this fair, Mark Dice and don’t agree on everything but we do agree one thing for sure: Peoeple seem to have become more and more impressionable and susceptible to not only what the main stream media is selling, but the accumulation of and consolidation of false truths, mislead ideas compounding on one another and spreading of wrong information throughout the masses to an even less informed public sphere.
This is a phenomenon is known as Repressive Desublimation first coined by philosopher and sociologist Herbert Marcuse in his 1964 work One-Dimensional Man. It’s the idea the Pop-culture eclipses real culture and can be seen day in and day out in the political area.
Take the case of Trump and Clinton. Two Larger than Life figures who at the end of the day don’t really give a shit or could even begin to understand the daily struggles of your everyday American. I’m pretty sure Donald Trump has never had to suffer the pain of seeing medi-cal doctors or pay off school loans and I’m pretty sure Hillary Clinton who is a career politician is so far disconnected from what an average life looks like that her ability to identify with everyday people is merely an act that is being performed with the intention to sway someone to like her and ultimately vote for her.
Can you Imagine the last time Trump or Clinton did something like: Take the garbage out, fix a toilet, clip coupons to go grocery shopping or being faced with something like having to make a choice between spending money on repairing a broken car or making a school loan payment? I think it’s safe to say it’s been a long time.
So if you could get past the fact that Hillary should arguably be in jail for treason, and Donald Trump has legitimately defrauded several people, businesses and cities then the only redeeming quality should be that in the very least they are relatable to us and could serve the country well in the capacity of President. Not.
In the next blog I am going to dive deeper in to 3rd Party Candidates, the real underdogs, and try to make some sense on why the best and brightest people never seem to make it to the Whitehouse.
It is not everyday that you really get to feel all of your hard work pay off. When I started currency trading 3 years ago, it was hard. There was a learning curve, and at times it seemed daunting and elusive to actually be successful at trading.
I really believe that when attempting anything new, there is going to be a period of time where you just suck at it. When you are a person who really likes to win, it can be difficult to attempt new things. The trick is that you simply need to accept the fact that you are a rookie, a noob, a kook or whatever and that you are not going to be killing it one month out of the gate.
Trading currencies has been a game changer for me. Coming from the sales and marketing world, investing in general seemed to be for brainiac types who were really good at numbers. I knew that I could always make money in a situation where there was something to sell, but could i have the same success as an investor, or as a FOREX Trader?
When I first found the Forex market I was vacationing in Bali Indonesia on a surf trip. On a day where there wasn’t any surf to be had, I started looking for ways to make money from a laptop…. (Watch the video, it will explain the rest so I can get on with my story)
Once I found the market and made my first couple hundred dollars before the sun came up one random morning, I was hooked! Unfortunately I never took in to consideration that in order to win at trading, you are going to take losses, and I was a guy who didn’t like to lose. I proceeded down a losing spiral of lost profits and nearly decimated my entire trading account in less then a months time.
I took a break from trading and was feeling pretty beat up by the market. Losing can really screw with you when catch a bad streak like I did. I was not prepared for the emotional turmoil that ensued. Unlike anything I had attempted before, currency trading required me do adopt a high level of emotional intelligence in order to be successful at it. So I got back up, dusted myself off, and got back to it.
The curriculum didn’t change, my perspective did. This time around, I was a lot more humble. After all I got my ass kicked. After putting in 6 months of hard work in, I starting to see some positive results in the form of substantial equity growth in my account. I was ready to take the show on the road, and see if I could really do this from anywhere in the world.
I headed down to Nicaragua with my girlfriend with 3 goals in mind:
Propose to my girlfriend
Surf some big waves
Pay for the whole trip currency trading from my laptop
I scored big time. The surf was macking, and I was pretty sure my girlfriend was going to say yes to marrying me. I was just waiting for the right moment to propose. I started doing my pre-sessions & technical analysis on the market looking for some trades one morning, and then just like that, a couple trade set ups presented themselves and I pulled the trigger!
— I was sitting in a youth hostel using their shotty wifi and hoping to God that the internet did not go out before I closed my trades. With in 15 minutes of trading I managed to pull 7 scalped trades netting me $1,272.96 after commissions. —
I closed my laptop, ordered an iced coffee and just sat for 10 minutes staring at the ocean and feeling like I had just pulled off a huge victory! I soaked it up, I proved that not only could I trade, but I could do it from a shitty hostel with bad wifi in Central America. Later that evening, I asked my girlfriend to marry me and she said yes.
So I got 2 out of 3 of my goals done. Even though $1,300 was not enough to cover the entire trip, I felt like $1,300 for 15 minutes of my time was well worth taking the rest of the trip for myself and to celebrate my new engagement. Besides, the surf was macking remember!
The moral of the story is that If you put your mind to something and stick with it, you can do it. The path to success is not linear, but it follows a trend!
If you want to know more about how you can become a currency trader and make profits in the market from a lap top anywhere in the world click the logo below and find out more about the FX365 Institute!
that not only could I trade, but I could do it from a shitty hostel with bad wifi in Central America. Later that evening, I asked my girlfriend to marry me and she said yes.