Keep in mind every source Thunderbolt referred you to is extremely anti-Donald Trump. If you’re truly trying to get a balanced perspective, read both sites that are Pro and anti-Trump.
I recommend Stefan Molyneux. Great analysis of the American Political climate. He puts all his sources in the description of the video so you can determine yourself the quality of his claims. They’re long but insightful.
Another thought on what I’m reading in this thread. As a “consumer” of politics (I’m not a politician nor am I an advisor, lobbyist, etc.) my primary concern is voting for politicians who will make good policy decisions. Discussions of good policy can be found in articles on sites and the pages of publications such as Foreign Affairs and the Economist far more often than you’ll see them on “political” sites. These latter sites are far more interested in the winning and losing aspects of politics, and often come down to such silly arguments as “capitalism” vs “socialism” (and that ship sailed years ago). The concern is where to strike the right balance between the two, such as where does privatization make sense and where does it not? Hint: a Nobel prize was just awarded in this area. Or, how can we regulate the banking and derivatives markets to make them transparent, avoid unmitigated and uncompensated risk, and use executive compensation schemes that help achieve these goals? Take a look at discussions around Dodd-Frank and EMIR in financial and legal practice publications for this. For social policy I suggest getting involved in charity work and learning what these organizations deal with on a daily basis. Seriously, it is far too easy to sit in a chair and complain about homelessness or people ripping off the government than it is to get involved. If you want to really see the mentally ill, the homeless, the abused, etc., and put a human face on the problem then get involved. I have found that Republicans tend to moderate their views after working in these areas, and Democrats moderate their views when looking at the details of our financial institutions. It takes work to get and stay informed, but it is worth it,
Most people don’t want to go into this level of detail so they depend on sound bites and personal attacks between candidates, but the details of policy matter. Here is one we are dealing with in Florida: “Amendment 1.” It’s a disguised play by the power companies to take control of private solar power. Unless you’re a power company, and it doesn’t matter which party affiliation you hold, it’s bad policy.
Edited for fat thumbs
I suspect Cruz’s performance would have been superior on many levels. However I’m relieved that Cruz did not win the nomination. IMO people like Ted (idealogues) need a seat at the table. They passionately represent their positions and provide great input, but should not be in a position to make the final decisions.
therajrai is the Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity of T-Nation.
If Cruz had the chance to debate Hillary, there would be nothing left but her robotic pieces all over the floor. It would have been 90 minute seminar on how to tool someone.
I thought all of you would like this. Well, maybe not Raj, but I think everybody else will appreciate. @MaximusB, Peggy Noonan knocks it out of the park today. This is one of the reasons I love the WSJ.
Look, he’s a nut and you know he’s a nut. I go to battleground states and talk to anyone, everyone. They all know Donald Trump’s a nut. Some will vote for him anyway. Many are in madman-versus-criminal mode, living with (or making) their final decision. They got the blues. Everyone does. They’re worried about the whole edifice: If this is where we are, where are we going?
I get the Reagan fantasy—big guy with a nonstandard résumé comes in from the outside, cleans out the stables, saves the day. But it’s a fantasy and does not apply to this moment. I get the Jacksonian fantasy—crude, rude populist comes in from the hinterlands and upends a decadent establishment to the huzzahs of normal people with mud on their boots. But it’s a fantasy, and doesn’t apply.
Because he’s not a grizzled general who bears on his face the scars of a British sword, and not a shining citizen-patriot. He’s a screwball. Do you need examples? You do not, because you’re already thinking of them. For a year you’ve been observing the TV funhouse that is his brain.
I offer an observation from Newt Gingrich, Trump friend and supporter, on David Drucker’s Washington Examiner podcast. Mr. Gingrich lauded Mr. Trump because he “thinks big” and is a transformational character. But he spoke too of Trump’s essential nature. The GOP nominee “reacts very intensely, almost uncontrollably” to “anything which attacks his own sense of integrity or his own sense of respectability.” “There’s . . . a part of his personality that sometimes gets involved in petty things that make no sense.” He found it “frankly pathetic” that Mr. Trump got mad because Paul Ryan didn’t call to congratulate him after the second debate.
Mr. Gingrich said he hopes this will change. But people don’t change the fundamentals of their nature at age 70.
Mr. Trump’s great historical role was to reveal to the Republican Party what half of its own base really thinks about the big issues. The party’s leaders didn’t know! They were shocked, so much that they indulged in sheer denial and made believe it wasn’t happening.
The party’s leaders accept more or less open borders and like big trade deals. Half the base does not! It is longtime GOP doctrine to cut entitlement spending. Half the base doesn’t want to, not right now! Republican leaders have what might be called assertive foreign-policy impulses. When Mr. Trump insulted George W. Bush and nation-building and said he’d opposed the Iraq invasion, the crowds, taking him at his word, cheered. He was, as they say, declaring that he didn’t want to invade the world and invite the world. Not only did half the base cheer him, at least half the remaining half joined in when the primaries ended.
The Republican Party will now begin the long process of redefining itself or continue its long national collapse. This is an epochal event. It happened because Donald Trump intuited where things were and are going.
Since I am more in accord with Mr. Trump’s stands than not, I am particularly sorry that as an individual human being he’s a nut.
Which gives rise to a question, for me a poignant one.
What if there had been a Sane Donald Trump?
Oh my God, Sane Trump would have won in a landslide.
Sane Donald Trump, just to start, would look normal and happy, not grim and glowering. He would be able to hear and act on good advice. He would explain his positions with clarity and depth, not with the impatient half-grasping of a notion that marks real Donald Trump’s public persona.
Sane Donald Trump would have looked at a dubious, anxious and therefore standoffish Republican establishment and not insulted them, diminished them, done tweetstorms against them. Instead he would have said, “Come into my tent. It’s a new one, I admit, but it’s yuge and has gold faucets and there’s a place just for you. What do you need? That I be less excitable and dramatic? Done. That I not act, toward women, like a pig? Done, and I accept your critique. That I explain the moral and practical underpinnings of my stand on refugees from terror nations? I’d be happy to. My well-hidden secret is that I love everyone and hear the common rhythm of their beating hearts.”
Sane Donald Trump would have given an anxious country more ease, not more anxiety. He would have demonstrated that he can govern himself. He would have suggested through his actions, while still being entertaining, funny and outsize, that yes, he understands the stakes and yes, since America is always claiming to be the leader of the world—We are No. 1!—a certain attendant gravity is required of one who’d be its leader.
Sane Donald Trump would have explained his immigration proposals with a kind of loving logic—we must secure our borders for a host of serious reasons, and here they are. But we are grateful for our legal immigrants, and by the way, if you want to hear real love for America then go talk to them, for they experience more freshly than we what a wonderful place this is. In time, after we’ve fully secured our borders and the air of emergency is gone, we will turn to regularizing the situation of everyone here, because Americans are not only kindly, they’re practical, and want everyone paying taxes.
Sane Donald Trump would have spoken at great and compelling length of how the huge, complicated trade agreements created the past quarter-century can be improved upon with an eye to helping the American worker. Ideology, he might say, is the pleasant diversion of the unworried, but a nation that no longer knows how to make steel cannot be a great nation. And we are a great nation.
Sane Donald Trump would have argued that controlling entitlement spending is a necessary thing but not, in fact, this moment’s priority. People have been battered since the crash, in many ways, and nothing feels stable now. Beyond that no one right now trusts Washington to be fair and wise in these matters. Confidence-building measures are necessary. Let’s take on the smaller task of turning around Veterans Affairs and see if we can’t make that work.
Sane Donald Trump would have known of America’s hidden fractures, and would have insisted that a healthy moderate-populist movement cannot begin as or devolve into a nationalist, identity-politics movement. Those who look down on other groups, races or religions can start their own party. He, the famous brander, would even offer them a name: the Idiot Party.
Sane Donald Trump would not treat the political process of the world’s greatest democracy as if it were, as somebody said, the next-to-last episode of a reality-TV series. That’s the episode that leaves you wondering how the season will end—who will scream, who will leave the drunken party in a huff, who will accuse whom of being a whore. I guess that’s what “I’ll keep you in suspense” as to whether he’ll accept the election result was about. We’re being teed up. The explosive season finale is Nov. 8. Maybe he’ll leave in a huff. Maybe he’ll call everyone whores.
Does he know he’s playing with fire? No. Because he’s a nut.
Sane Donald Trump for president. Too bad he doesn’t exist.
This was my feeling exactly. I don’t want to see an ideologue from either extreme. Someone who cannot bring over moderates from the other side of center. This is just pragmatism really. If we want to feel some unity as a nation, the moderate voices have to prevail. Unfortunately, we’ve seen nothing but the tail wagging the dog. People on the extremes have pulled both parties, and it’s deepened the divide. I’m not sure how we get over that.
Off topic a little bit, but I almost didn’t click on this thread when I saw 'Murrica. I can’t tell you how much I dislike the 'Merica, 'Murrica thing.
We’re a great country.
These people died for America, a place that still inspires me.
edited to add - I read this as talking about rednecks, or the people of Walmart, or the unsophisticated fat Evangelicals in the flyover states. - I think it’s a class thing. The intellectual progressives have contempt for these people.
Can’t agree enough. These are my 2 biggest guiding lights.
Me too. I find staring at an idea for a while and writing notes down in the margins is probably the best way to thinkg about it. Also bug on tactile reading but unfortunately not everything is hard copy. I am working on a library lol
yes yes and yes. great post.
anonym, for politics rumors–but not really news, just the up to the minute gossip–the hill is decent.
I dont like thehill, or evev politico for considering big questions, but do like them for their ability to find developing events quickly–which I assume is because of their network inside the beltway–sometimes with details other sources dont have.
Fixed that for ya. 
I literally laughed out loud.
If I were going to create a cartoon of a person that @anonym shouldn’t waste his time with, it’d look like this Molyneux clown - non-American, peddles radical, adolescent political theory, has unresolved mommy issues, heads a cult, and scams the cult members out of their money.
This is a pet peeve of mine. I grew up in a reasonably well educated, but decidedly not affluent, family from the south. I’ve earned my stripes, but the self-assured elitism I see trying to pass itself off as leadership doesn’t cut it. Leaders inspire. They bring groups together, and they get people fired up to make positive change. They give people a way to step up and better themselves, and then give back to the communities they came from. What I’m watching is self-absorbed narcissists try to play puppet master and failing at it.
I think you’re painting with too broad a brush here. Molyneux is not terrible and has had some good commentary in the past. He has though, like with many, recently decided to put his principles aside and do mental back flips to support Donald Trump at all costs.
It makes me want to go apoplectic. I cannot stand that.
The truly, TRULY sad part of this election cycle is that-
-If the Republicans nominated just about anyone OTHER than Trump (I think Kasich/Rubio/Bush had the best chance out of them all), the Clinton would be drowning in all those scandals. Even if they were all over-exaggerations, she would have had such a difficult time trying to do anything besides defend herself that she probably would never be able to mount an effective campaign.
And the Republicans would probably win in a land-slide in the general election.
-If the Democrats nominated just about anyone OTHER than Clinton AND Sanders, then Trump would be thrown to the curb by the Republicans the moment he insulted McCain and offended veterans everywhere.
And the Democrats would win in such an overwhelming land-slide that the Republican Party will be left wondering just wtf happened.
Honestly… I wish we had Obama running now, and McCain in 08. That would have been better… I think.
Yes. @pet peeve - Me too. I grew up in a rural place. Lots of my childhood friends and family members lived in trailers. Many still do. Blue collar people in the trades, farmers, ranchers, people who served in the military. I can’t stand the smug elitism. Seriously, we have a class problem. We hear progressives talk about how the Republican party should do some soul searching. They’re right, but I live and work among a lot of very affluent, ivy league liberals. Many of them have ZERO clue about blue-collar America. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that I’m their ONLY Republican friend. They find much of the culture I grew up with to be embarrassing. There is a tendency to assume a lot in terms of small town people being unsophisticated, stupid, conservatives - these terms are interchangable.
/rant
There’s only one other word that gets used here that I dislike more than 'murica. I won’t say what it is, but it isn’t a swear word.
No, My comments were not directly strictly at his YouTube bits. He preaches a philosophy that individuals should divorce themselves from their natural family (on the basis that their natural family was abusive to them) and then convinces these individuals to join a group he formed as an alternative. Joining costs money, and higher amounts of money gets closer and closer access to Molyneux’s inner circle. And when people leave the cult, Molyneux and his cronies try to shame them publicly.
His political views are alt-right anarcho-capitalism - so, radical nonsense flavored with bigotry and misogyny, and his pro-Trump videos are thinly argued monologues. That alone makes him someone to ignore. But layer on top of that, he’s a cult leader and a scam artist. True story.
I was unaware of all that family stuff (deFOO apparently). Definitely a little strange.