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10/08/2016
Election 2016: A Libertarian Analysis
It is 30 days before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and as predictable as an eclipse, every media personality and government authority at home and abroad assures us that this is the most important decision of our lives. This time, maybe it's true.
The polls change day to day, some show Trump ahead, while others show Hillary with the edge. Both candidates have a healthy list of scandals that are ignored by their supporters and decried by their detractors, and they keep coming. In a single weekend we've seen twin bombshells land with Trump's vulgar comments from an Access Hollywood hot mic, and WikiLeaks dumping Hillary's open-border promoting speeches to Goldman Sachs. We're barely more than a week into October, so God knows what further October surprises await us. Trump has -1 endorsements across the top 100 news publications, and even the top Democrat politicos admit they have a tough job getting their constituents excited for Hillary. With both major candidates having 58% negative favorability rating, it is clear that a large swath of the voting public aren't voting for one candidate, as much as they are voting against the other.
This state of affairs should have been the opportunity of a lifetime for the Libertarian Party, but instead we have become a laughing stock. In 2012, I triumphantly reported that Gary Johnson accepted my gift and assured me that he would read For a New Liberty. Either he did not follow through, or anything he learned has been smoked away in recent years. As for the LP VP Bill Weld, the anti-gun pro-Hillary establishment Republican, all shame belongs to the delegates at the LP convention and those like myself that did not even attend to try and stop this predictable disaster.
Given all this, what can a libertarian reasonably expect? What should we hope for, and what should we prepare for? And for those inclined to vote libertarian, as I argued should be the obvious choice just 4 years ago, is that still the best course of action?
Option Hillary - God Help Us
Imagine the horror: it's a month from now, the fix is in, and Hillary wins the presidency. As much as I hate to say, this is a very plausible scenario - not necessarily because she will get a majority vote, but because it is unimaginable that the establishment could allow a Trump victory. In the wake of the victorious Brexit movement the Economist declared that left vs. right is over, and all globalists of both parties must support Hillary to save the New World Order. But this goes beyond the American elite, the who's who of Bilderberg, the CFR, and other globalist organizations are all in a state of panic, with the UN going so far as to tweet in desperation for foreign Americans to stop Trump.
So imagine the worst-case scenario: we have Hillary Clinton, a career-criminal psychopath with dozens of scandals across multiple decades sitting in the White House once again. But for a moment, let's forget her financial crimes of the "boss-hog" variety, like getting rich off insider trade deals, stealing donations meant for Haiti, and operating her foundation as a money laundering operation for the State Department. Let's even put aside her more personal offenses, like concealing evidence to defend a known pedophile rapist, her smear campaigns against Bill's consensual and non-consensual affairs, and even the ever-growing body count left in her wake. The real concern is this: how will Hillary react when the market acknowledges that the Fed can never raise interest rates without throwing the economy into a depression worse than 2008? What happens when the bond bubble bursts? What happens when the dollar is in a state of free-fall?
Hillary is exactly the type of person the New World Order wants to be steering the ship of state when we go off the financial cliff. Martial law, gun-grabs, and all out civil-war are all on the table when an establishment puppet has to take "emergency measures" to deal with an America in meltdown. But that's just on the domestic front, the perfect way to distract the people from problems at home is to create an even bigger international crisis, and we've already seen what Hillary is capable of. She is foaming at the mouth in anticipation of additional foreign wars to complete the job of overthrowing countries in Africa and the Middle East to create failed states and bases for ISIS. But we must never forget that these proxy wars are on Russia's door-step, and even if the American media decides it isn't newsworthy, that doesn't discredit the ever-increasing danger of all-out nuclear war.
Hence, the best-case scenario under a Hillary presidency is that we survive anything short of nuclear war. Considering all the other potential Democratic candidates that could have been offered, it is indeed strange that they would push someone as unlikable and scandal-ridden as Hillary. Perhaps Hillary's insatiable power hunger could be her downfall. Is it too much to hope that the lame duck presidency of Obama could follow Hillary into her first term? Would the military refuse to serve as the ISIS air force or to participate in gun confiscation? The bright side of having a villain of comic-book proportions sitting as president is that the outrageous crimes that she will engage in will be too much for even the most brain-dead, Stockholm-syndrome statists to ignore. Perhaps future history books will look back at her administration as the time when the people finally woke up to the evil, incompetent, self-destructive nature of government. She could be the final indignity that Americans can stand, the catalyst that brings down the empire of lies through her own wickedness, the darkest hour just before dawn.
Option Trump - The Battle has just Begun
If we assumed a fair voting process, then one could objectively say that this election is Trump's to lose. With even rigged polls that contain more democrats than republicans, Trump is neck and neck in areas that democrats traditionally dominate, and is outright winning in many swing states. Also, these polls assume the type of voter turn-out that occurred in 2008 and 2012, and ignore the fact that Trump has inspired a record breaking voter turnout for the Republican primary as well as early voting turnouts in some states. If Trump's landslide victory is large enough, it may be too much for voter fraud to combat without jeopardizing all faith and support for the government. At that point, the shadow government may view stealing the election as a hollow victory, throwing out the government baby with the Trump bath water.
In the worst-case scenario, we can imagine the entire New World Order system throwing everything they have against a Trump presidency. They would be more than happy to pull the plug on the economy and blame the resulting devastation on the Trump victory. Would the Trump administration be able to entirely clean house and rid itself of every double-agent, or would enough snakes wait in the grass to strike at an opportune moment? With terrorist attacks, dirty bombs, and racial mobs funded by George Soros burning down inner cities - they could truly create hell. We must remember that the globalist enemies would not only be fighting to keep their privileged possessions, but perhaps for their freedom and their very lives. They could be the most dangerous of cornered rats.
These challenges would be a given in a Trump administration. But the real question is how would the Donald respond? We could see every libertarian Trump supporter swallowing his endorsement as the worst things Trump said over the course of the campaign come to fruition. The candidate of "law and order" may bring an outrageous police state to America, complete with a border wall to keep us from leaving. The candidate who simplifies complex economic laws into the need for "better trade deals" may truly be that simple. We must remember that Trump the master entrepreneur has the indispensable element of profits and loses to guide his decisions to expand a successful business or to put a failing one into bankruptcy. Trump the politician will lose that data and will be as helpless to make correct economic decisions as the tsar of any 3rd-world socialist state. He will have to operate by instinct alone, and if he fails to bring about the success that his ego demands, he could become a fascist strong-man of the worst order, even with the best intentions.
The best-case scenario is almost too fantastic to take seriously, but we should review it just the same. Talk show host Alex Jones has repeatedly claimed from his inside sources that Trump is a sleeper-cell super-patriot decades in the making. Just as George Washington and other founding fathers were the wealthiest Americans who were tired of licking British boots, Trump is a self-made billionaire that detests the New World Order and has pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor to take them down. Rather than use his billions to escape the coming chaos and live a life of secluded luxury, Trump is ready to risk it all in an epic battle to the death to save America and the world from a eugenics-based, technocratic, satanic elite hell-bent on destroying the world. In this rosy scenario, Trump understands the free-market solutions needed to solve our problems, but he has made the calculated decision to speak to the American voter in the childish terms they want to hear in order to get elected. But when the tough decisions need to be made, Trump will boldly dispense the much-needed medicine to reignite the potential of the economy and make America great again.
The Biggest Loser - Libertarians
A colossal opportunity has been lost. A realistic look at the body-politic of America could convince any but the most delusional that Americans are simply not anywhere close to electing a true libertarian to office. Decades of government school and media influence have erected substantial mental barriers that make it incredibly difficult for our ideas to be understood. Fallacy upon fallacy stand in the way between the people we wish to reach and the information we wish to provide. Clearly, we have a lot of work to do.
So just as myself and others have warned, by nominating candidates that may "look presidential" but are mental midgets in communicating the libertarian message, we will lose twice: first we will lose the election, and second we have failed to educate.
But unlike other years where our candidate was simply ignored, this year we may have done catastrophic and possibly irreparable damage to the libertarian brand. What is it to be a libertarian? To force a baker to bake a Nazi cake? To endorse government managed trade through the TPP? To support gun control? To espouse a wishy-washing hodge-podge collection of random positions and repeatedly fail to explain even the most basic libertarian principles of self-ownership or the non-aggression principle?
When the presidential ticket, the supposed leaders of the Libertarian Party, ignorantly spout such nonsensical positions that are so blatantly anti-libertarian we may have screwed up our public image beyond repair. Will we look back at this time and say this is when we had to abandon the libertarian term in order to communicate? Just as the liberalism of Ludwig von Mises has morphed over a century into a term equivalent to the omnipotent state, will future "voluntaryists" need to refer to the "libertarianism of Murray Rothbard" to have an unambiguous conversation? Let us hope not. But beyond hope, we must ensure that our core marketing and communication initiatives are not through the political arena, but are through promoting and supporting libertarian competition in education like Tom Wood's Liberty Classroom and news sites like LewRockwell.com.
Conclusion
As we've reviewed the conceivable best and worst case scenarios for the 2016 election, the questions that remain are what can we reasonably expect, what should we work towards, and what should we prepare for?
One thing is for certain; even if Trump is in an unstealable lead the establishment will not go quietly into the night or meekly be led to jail. Elites around the globe are unanimous that the New World Order must have a Hillary victory to survive. To what length will these globalist terrorists go to save themselves? Economic crises, dirty bombs, terrorist attacks, war - nothing is off the table. We have backed uber-criminals into a corner, and there is no end to what they could do.
So on the one hand, the romantic in me would love to see a Trump victory that reinforces the anti-globalist sentiment and inspires new waves of nationalism and secession across the planet. However the empire chooses to strike back, let them do their worst, and let us hope that Trump becomes the next George Washington in a world-wide 1776 2.0.
But on the other hand, do we really want the lesson learned from this historic time to be that the American people can only be saved by a politician, albeit one that comes from outside the establishment? At a time when the public has all-time disapproval and distrust for their political leaders, do we want the political system rescued by producing a savior? Perhaps in the long run, the best thing really would be for Hillary to break the US into a thousand pieces and force the American people to start looking outside politics to solve their problems. Assuming this can be done without nuclear war, sometimes things must get worse before they get better.