My view of our choices in the 2016 presidential election

Voting is an interesting issue. Many of us like to take it very seriously, even though the vast majority of us have virtually no impact one way or the other even in swing states like Michigan, and it's really more about where we are putting our hope and loyalty than anything else.

Each candidate on the ballot represents a group of leaders, a particular set of solutions, and a particular message that we either do or don't want to sign on with. The leaders and coalitions that back a candidate are very telling in terms of predicting what that candidate will do. That's who a leader is ultimately accountable to, never forget that.

The solutions should be viewed more as a philosophy to suit the leaders and coalitions behind the candidate, specific policies mentioned on the campaign trail are worthless. Even Obama, who campaigned on Obamacare and made it the signature legislation of his presidency, had to go back on many of the details in his plan in order to pass it while in office.

Finally there's the message you're attaching yourself to, which is often either a belief in the leaders and coalition your voting with or else a big **** YOU! to the leaders and coalition that you don't want to see in power.

Here's my view of the five candidates and what we are choosing if we decide to select them on our ballots:

Jill Stein

Who does she represent?

Part of me thinks Jill Stein is actually drawing much of her support (in terms of finances, not voters) from Republican donors that want to use her to leech crucial voters away from Hillary Clinton. Much of her messaging is aimed more at insulting and attacking Hillary Clinton and drawing in people from the far left wing of the Democrat party than anything else.

Jill Stein represents the ultra-hippy liberals of our nation that can't abide the level of compromise needed to elect "a progressive who gets things done" like Hillary Clinton.

What solutions does she offer?

This is largely irrelevant, since none of her policies would have a chance of getting passed by Congress and she doesn't have a chance of being named president.

What message are we aligning with if we vote Stein?

That the Democrat party is not liberal enough and needs to be held to account! Liberals that want to send a **** YOU message to the Democrat party for moving back to the center after Obama with the Clinton nomination may choose to do so with Stein. Probably not very many will do so, though.

Evan McMullin

Who does he represent?

Evan McMullin is a (sorta) clever play by the neoconservatives in Washington to try and undermine the attempt by Donald Trump to transform the Republican party into a nationalist party that includes working class white voters.

His background includes

-Working for Goldman Sachs, who represent the worst of American banking and encouraging a debt-ridden, short-term thinking US economy.

-Working for the CIA, who represent the worst of American foreign policy and creating a "tumulta Americana" by spreading disorder across the globe in an effort to achieve American end goals.

-Membership in the Mormon Church, who represent the worst of "America is the end goal of God's plan for the planet" religious thinking that can also be found in some protestant circles.

The play here is for McMullin to try to leech some evangelicals who are traditionally Republican but uncomfortable with Donald Trump and to rally enough Mormon voters in Utah to win that state and rob Trump of its six electoral votes that could be crucial in the event of a tight race where he wins Florida and Ohio but can't nab another big state.

There's also a potential scheme in which neither Trump nor Clinton reach 270 electoral votes and the election goes to the house of representatives, who then choose McMullin instead. Now, this is a total pipe dream that would never happen unless the Republican party was willing to risk being literally tarred and feathered by their voters, but that's at least the story.

Evan McMullin represents the oligarchic or "deep state" elements of the Republican party that want to continue to pump the economy with debt and engage in wars across the globe packaged in a friendly face that pretends to be primarily concerned with social morality issues. The real goal is to throw the election to Clinton, who will maintain the same economic and foreign policies.

What solutions does he offer?

Basically the ones that Romney presented four years ago, not that it particularly matters. This guy won't be president, he probably won't even win Utah.

What message are we aligning with if we vote McMullin?

Many conservatives will vote McMullin as part of a "I want a leader I can be proud of!" message in order to avoid having to pull the lever for a sleaze bag like Donald Trump. However, under the table you're ultimately aligning with powerful elements within the party that hate Trump's policy proposals and are using the "personal morality" play because they think it will work, not because it's one of their true values.

Gary Johnson

Who does he represent?

This is Gary Johnson's second time running as the presidential candidate for the Libertarian party and he mostly represents Libertarian Americans who's main preference in politics is that it has as little to do with their everyday lives as possible.

He doesn't have big, powerful backing and he's not really targeting either Clinton or Trump voters but simply any voters he thinks he can get. The Libertarian party has tried to make a play in this election for the moderate, suburban middle class Americans that generally lean Republican but these are not "limited government!" people so it's not really been a genuine or promising alliance that is likely to actually yield long term fruit for the Libertarian party.

The modern Libertarian party today doesn't really take sides on the culture wars, preferring to let culture move in whatever fashion in wants while moving the government out of the way. So on social issues like abortion, gay marriage, or drug legalization they'd like to see the government end their involvement. They're also pretty hands off with economic or foreign policy issues, most people agree with at least some element of the Libertarian platform. Specifically whichever part where they personally enjoy or benefit from autonomy from the collective.

What solutions does he offer?

Gary Johnson is something of a goofball who thinks the US government is over-extended (it is) and wants to reduce what's on the Fed's plate. He'd drastically reduce America's imperial efforts overseas, perhaps drastically so, and work to cut any government programs that he could get bipartisan support to cut.

Ultimately though, the solutions that Gary Johnson offers aren't what he'll do in office, his goal in this election is to make third parties and limited government solutions viable options for the future. However, neither Johnson nor the libertarian party are really vehicles that can handle that kind of assignment. If they had positions of power, they'd just support the "keep government out of my life!" tendencies in either party while negating the "use government to impose X vision for the country!" tendencies in either party.

There's not really a major groundswell in the country for that kind of policy. To just obstruct everything that either party would like to do isn't appealing to most folks because the country has problems that people want to see the government attempt to solve.

A positive vision for the use of power usually trumps a hands off approach.

What message are we aligning with?

There are two messages that people seem keen to send with a vote for Gary Johnson. The first is a "let's stop using the government to address issues and try to sort out more with the free market and free-acting adults!" That's the typical libertarian message and seems to get about 1-2% of the vote in a normal year.

Another message is "**** this two-party system! We need more options and I'm going to encourage the most popular third option no matter what it is!" This is the message from people that can't bring themselves to vote for either Trump or Clinton and are happy to make a protest vote.

That's a potentially powerful message that could impact future elections if the major parties determine that they lost too many votes due to having candidates with a lack of appeal. Of course, the Republican party has completely lost control of their own process so unless they can retake control from Trump that's a moot point. The Democrats are more likely to be impacted by Gary Johnson snatching up a chunk of the electorate unless they find themselves victorious here or they keep their base in line.

It's more probable that those parties will lose key voters to staying home rather than them voting positively for the Libertarian option.

Gary Johnson is basically the play if you think the biggest problem facing America is a lack of options in presidential elections. If there are other matters that you think the US govt needs to address then you're better off compromising and doing the difficult calculus to determine which people should be empowered to bring solutions.

Hillary Clinton

Who does she represent?

Hillary Clinton mostly represents America's ruling class, the wealthy elites that control both parties through campaign donations and seek a neoliberal agenda for American empire around the world. Open borders, free trade agreements, and government subsidization of the working class are the main goals here.

On any issue where there's consensus amongst the ruling elites in our nation, which are mainly issues in which their power and influence over the country or interests abroad are expanded or preserved, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, or any establishment figure from either party is going to be more or less the same. They all come pre-approved from elite consensus.

On issues that don't particularly matter to the status of the elites, the difference comes down to what their constituents want. The GOP establishment represents voters that have traditional values whereas the DNC has to appease voters with a much more progressive vision for matters like abortion, gay marriage, or gun rights.

For a matter like Supreme Court appointments, there would be some massive differences between Hillary Clinton and someone like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, for a matter like Syrian policy or immigration then the differences would be rather marginal.

What solutions does she offer?

The neoliberal goal is to offer greater government services for the citizens to keep them safe and happy as ruling elites exercise greater control and influence over the nation and its resources. That means continued low interests rates to keep the stock market going, moving Obamacare towards a single-payer solution, continuing to try and assert Western hegemony internationally to suit Western business interests (it's not for the good of the Syrian people that the US is currently involved), and continuing to make the West into a multi-cultural empire through open immigration.

If you have access to a degree and higher paying jobs then this vision includes some future for a middle class but it also greatly expands the pool of people who are de-facto serfs, living (hopefully rather comfortably) under the protection of big businesses with government subsidization that takes care of their health bills and retirement.

It's a far cry from the Republic of self-sufficient peasants that Thomas Jefferson envisioned or that the Republican party nominally tries to protect, but it probably sounds okay or even great to many Americans. The major problem is whether America's elites are actually competent enough to deliver on everything they're promising to deliver if their control and influence expands, or if they're competent enough to protect and expand American influence abroad in the face of 4th generation warfare and uber-competent rivals in Moscow and Beijing. There's also the question of whether they're too corrupt to accomplish those aims and actually serve the people they're asking to trust them with greater and greater power, particularly with the Clintons in charge.

What message are we aligning with?

There are three messages that people can send or align with by voting for Hillary Clinton. One is an open-eyed "I understand this vision for a globalist, multi-cultural empire run by American and Western elites and I think that's our best path forward."

Another is the, "I care deeply about progressive social values and since the president is going to be either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump then that means I need to vote Clinton! She's the closest, realistic option I have to my preferred vision for the country."

The final one is "**** that bigoted, sleaze bag Donald Trump! **** his deplorable voters! I'm not letting those people get anywhere near the levers of power in this country!"

Donald Trump

Who does he represent?

Trump represents the self-sufficient Americans who see the chances of their children having the lives they were able to build completely slipping away as the country becomes increasingly diverse, densely populated, debt-ridden, and dependent on Government subsidization.

He's done something interesting by uniting working class white folks from the North and South who once fought a bitter civil war with each other. However, his loose lips and sleazy past don't make him the favorite of all the traditional, college-educated Republicans in the suburbs or evangelicals.

Within his sphere of advisors there are some figures that have been friendly to the "Alt-Right" which is a new right wing movement looking to replace conservatism with something that emphasizes white identity, there are moderates that favor more nationalist policies that focus on law and order and internal improvements at home rather than adventurism abroad, and then there are "paleo-conservatives" that hate how the Republican party was co-opted by the neocons to emphasize aggressive foreign policy. Historically it's very difficult to conserve a culture and values if you're extending your reach and bringing new people under the umbrella.

So the advisors for Trump will likely push for stricter immigration policies, stronger law and order policies in the inner city (ala New York's crackdown in the 90s), and de-escalation abroad in which the United States stops trying to influence foreign governments and project power abroad. For the sake of his constituents, which are working class Americans (mostly white although his coalition is proving more diverse than expected and more diverse than Romney's) you can expect an attempt to pass protectionist laws meant to protect the American worker from immigration reducing the cost of labor or American companies moving factories over seas and removing options for Americans to get middle class jobs in manufacturing.

What solutions does he offer?

Clinton wants to keep the America of the 90's and 00's going, that's the one she knows (like the back of her hand) and the one she's always been working under. Donald Trump wants to back track to the 1950s when America was defined by the working class family, fathers could make enough money to allow their wives to stay home, the US hadn't engaged in a series of disastrous wars trying to impose regime change to serve the empire abroad, and the ruling elites had much more limited control over the country.

If your view of the 50s is picket fences, happy Americans, and good opportunity for all then this is probably exciting to you. If you view the 50s as racial oppression, white supremacy, and untapped promise then you're probably less excited.

Of course in reality, America is never going back to the 50's. What Trump will probably actually do is oversee a controlled decline of American empire abroad by deferring some of the "Pax Romana" role of maintaining global order to Russia and China and halting the transformation of the West into a multi-cultural empire.

Essentially Trump's "make America great again" is really a "try to preserve America as a nation of self-sufficient middle class peoples with traditional values" with a likely result of America becoming less "great" abroad. It's essentially the Byzantine or English "steady decline" approach rather than the Roman "bring it crashing down" to the descent of an empire. If you don't think America should accept a decrease in the empire then you probably won't like Trump's solutions unless you're willing to trade four years of gradual decline in exchange for a better option for re-amping things in four years when Clinton most certainly won't be on the ballot (assuming she loses here).

What message are we aligning with?

I think there are three main messages people are sending with a Donald Trump vote. For many traditional, conservative Republicans the message is basically "**** Hillary Clinton, that woman is full-on corrupt and represents the worst elements of the democrat party. A.B.C. Anyone but Clinton." For many of these people, the two to three supreme court justices appointments at stake in this election are tantamount to everything that's at stake.

Another is from working class Americans who feel (justifiably) that the democrat party has left them behind and are voting to put "one of their own" into power to see that their interests are protected. Trump obviously isn't a working class dude, but he's always connected with them, check out his appearances on WWE. Many of these people are traditionally democrats or disenfranchised folks who haven't voted in a while. Both the working class crew and the traditional GOP voter are probably also highly motivated by the way that Obamacare has left a smoking crater in the banking accounts of many middle class Americans.

Finally there are the people who see Trump as the figurehead of a movement to turn back the clock on America and prevent it from being transformed into something wholly different than what it was for them growing up. In the sense that Trump wants to slow immigration, fight to keep traditional middle class jobs in the U.S., and go to war with the way that political correctness is redefining American values, he represents a new (or very old) brand of conservatism that is resonating.

The potential evils of extreme nationalism are well documented by history, and Trump's embrace of the nationalism moving across the West has earned him the tag "the new Hitler!" But I think the West has oversteered too far away from Nationalism in the wake of WWI and WWII and that some course correction is due or else we risk changing American too much and too quickly for things to go down well.

I'd probably be an ABC voter no matter what, but for all his prodigious faults, I'm for sending a message today that we need to back track and seek to conserve American from the neoliberal overhaul it's been subject to for the last few decades. I'll be voting Donald Trump, God help us all and God bless America.

A guide to the first 2016 presidential debate

I've not really seen a consensus from election analysts on how much these debates really matter. I'm guessing for the vast majority of the people who tune in they only serve to confirm what they already were already thinking.

I imagine most people watching the debates are doing so with a "I hope undecided Fred is listening to this...maybe I'll go on Facebook and make sure he hear candidate's X point, then he'll surely realize what a worthless buffoon candidate Y is!"

Here's some of my own guesswork on how this thing is likely to go down and what the results will prove to be.

None of the facts, figures, or arguments really matter that much.

No one really cares too much about those, no one's going into this debate waiting to hear the numbers on tax policies that will cinch the deal, confirm which ideology is best, and explain which candidate is the "Honest Abe" that's going to reunite this country in a utopia.

What will matter is how each candidate makes you feel and what kind of narrative and impression you attach to each candidate. The facts and figures that "fact checkers" will look into...everyone knows those are largely bogus or irrelevant and people only care when the other candidate gets called a liar so that they can go on Facebook and say "see that, undecided Fred! I told you candidate X was full of it!"

So the real story here will be which candidate works against the caricature being created for them by the opposing candidate and sells a vision or narrative of their own candidacy that is compelling enough to lure in undecided voters and inspire their own people to actually show up and vote.

Clinton's strategy will be to try and draw a contrast between herself as a seasoned, worthy veteran of governing and avoid taking shots other than to demean various Trump comments as "unpresidential" or indicative of an unqualified buffoon who's in over his head.

If you were one of the few unfortunates who watched Biden vs Ryan in the 2012 Vice Presidential debate you may remember Biden talking over Ryan, interrupting him, and rolling his eyes at virtually every comment.

It'd be going too far for Hillary to match that performance, but something similar where she treats Trump like a reckless child that needs to be reined in by a strong adult would make a lot of sense.

The worst thing that could happen would be for him to look presidential in direct comparison to her and thus gain credibility with the college educated voters that are avoiding jumping on his wagon.

If she wants to play this aggressively then she'll look to press Trump on any issue where she feels he gave a weak or ignorant answer to a question from the moderator. Marco Rubio did this to some effect in one of the later GOP debates but then it only served to bolster Cruz as Trump's opposition.

The problem she has in this format is that she tends to operate off a script with highly detailed, prepared plans whereas Trump reacts in the moment. So any plan she has for going after him could be derailed if he goes off script in an effective way and then she's left without a prepared response.

The safer plan would be to rely on the media and her supporters to draw a contrast.

Most of the advantages in the debate are Trump's

Here's a list of just a few of the ways in which he's at advantage in this thing.

Advantage 1: A favorable point spread

Polls indicate that most people, outside of those who already expect to vote for Trump, believe that the debate format will favor Clinton. That means that voter's expectations are higher for Clinton and the debate betting line is basically Clinton -5.

To beat Clinton -5, Trump doesn't have to actually win the debate or tie with her, he just needs to play within five points (so to speak) and he'll come out ahead as a result of exceeding expectations.

If he demonstrates a greater command of policy, details, and avoids any particularly boorish moments that make him hard to take seriously then he'll exceed the expectations of many voters. Clinton has spent much of the last few months building a caricature of Trump as a reckless, racist madman who can't be trusted with the nuclear codes. It's been pretty effective but the problem is that it's such a cartoonish caricature that it may not be that hard for him to blow it up by simply acting like a responsible, measured adult for 90 minutes.

Advantage 2: A simpler message

On an issue like national security, Hillary needs to craft explanations for why being welcoming to immigrants is useful in the fight against terrorism, why her interventionist policies abroad actually do work to the advantage of Americans, and why Russia is a pernicious threat who's activities in the old Eastern bloc should be taken very seriously.

None of those positions are obvious at first glance and will have to be explained in simple, convincing fashion for Americans to hop aboard. If you haven't listened to her much, Clinton isn't necessarily a natural communicator so this should be interesting to observe.

Trump's positions contain a great deal more plain, obvious sense and he communicates them at about an 8th grade level. When Trump says something like, "we need extreme vetting to make sure that dangerous people aren't coming into our country!" that just makes a lot of obvious sense and it then falls on Clinton to explain why we wouldn't use extreme vetting to protect the borders or why Trump doesn't have a monopoly on keeping dangerous people out of the country.

When Trump says something like, "why should we be opposed to Russia? We should be working with them around the globe to defeat radical Islamic terror," it then falls on Clinton to explain why it's better to continue to position our country against Russia's foreign policy despite this shared concern for an issue that is much larger concern to Americans at home then who rules Crimea.

Clinton will try to dismiss his policy prescriptions and campaign values as "racist" and "unserious" while outlining her own policies as being more nuanced and intelligent, but this could be tough given how easily he'll communicate whatever sense there is behind his own stances.

Advantage 3: Hillary's health

The health issues that have dogged Clinton's campaign couldn't be worse for her in terms of the overall persuasion battle for the trust of American voters.

While Clinton is trying to paint Donald Trump as a reckless, racist who shouldn't be trusted with the nuclear codes, Trump is trying to paint Hillary Clinton as a corrupt, conniving, and sickly figurehead of an establishment that doesn't actually care for the average joe.

When videos go viral of her coughing uncontrollably, getting dragged into her van after nearly collapsing, or losing control of her eyes while making speeches...it really fleshes out the caricature and serves his purposes extraordinarily well. Either you see her as more corrupt or as unfit to protect the nation, both of which are killers for her election hopes.

Anything that happens during the debate that even hints at a lack of health on the part of Clinton would be pretty devastating. Of course, if she's actually sick and her eyes go crossways or she faints at her podium...all the more so.

The likely outcomes and consequences

There are lots of legitimately undecided voters out there, or voters who haven't committed in one direction or another at least, who are likely to use the debates to cement their leanings. The big question is, which way are these people already leaning and will the debate serve those leanings?

If you're leaning towards Clinton then a moderate execution of her plan to spell out nuanced, presidential sounding positions while avoiding a seizure should probably do the trick unless Trump really amazed. If he makes some stupid comment then she's in great shape.

If you're leaning toward Trump but just can't bring yourself to do it then a debate in which he avoids too many Trumpisms while having a chance to lay out his simple principles might be enough to convince you to fall in line with the GOP. If she coughs and sputters while trying to explain how Trump is the candidate for the ultrarich despite their massive investment into her candidacy then he's probably in great shape.

My guess is that sharing a stage with Clinton and having a chance to outline his message in his own words to an audience that may include people only familiar with the caricature is probably going to work to Trump's advantage.

Whatever happens, the more politically active Facebook users will declare victory for their preferred candidate, as will the political strategists on television.

Ask yourself, "how did this candidate make me feel?" and you'll have a more accurate sense of what the actual results will be from this charade.

Why white, college-educated voters don't understand the 2016 election

I'm going to posit a radical suggestion, building off my previous post about the effects of modern media, and factoring in my own observations.

As a white dude with a college degree who's fully immersed in the world of social media, I'm going to suggest that we white folk with college degrees are totally out of touch with the majority of the United States.

Most of you are probably with me so far, after all acknowledging "white privilege" and being out of touch with the experience of people of color within the country is a pretty popular thing to do these days. Now I'm going to clarify and go a step further, I think we white folk with college degrees are also largely out of touch with white people who don't have a college degree.

This is pretty popular as well, the one group that modern political correctness allows bigotry towards is working class white people. Many people in my sphere of the world (college-educated white folk who love to express opinions on social media) would be proud to be disassociated with their working class cousins who hold "deplorable" views.

But here's the ramification of that, it means that people in my sphere do not understand what is happening in the 2016 election or the reality of how politics in the United States are shifting in a permanent way.

Let's start with this handy chart, which I believe is going to shock the vast majority of fellow college-educated white people who see it:

There is so much here that stands in stark contrast to the prevailing narratives about elections these days. One thing that I think will surprise a lot of people is that Romney won college-educated white voters and they were his primary base of support. While Republicans count on working-class whites to win states in the South (and there Romney won their support), northern working class whites saw him as an aloof, elitist that wouldn't look out for their interests. So he failed to win important battleground states like Ohio or anywhere else in the Rust Belt. Nor did he win Florida, which is only partly a Southern state.

Another fact here that will probably shock people is that the white working class people largely seen as being racist and stupid were the biggest part of the Obama coalition. Yes Obama did exceptionally well with people of color and won minority groups by massive margins, yes Obama was able to drive exceptional turnout from his fellow black Americans. However, without that positive margin with working class white voters, he loses.

This also gives lie to the notion that the key to Republican victory in the future is to try and take support away from the Democrats by picking off minority voters through measures like increased immigration or amnesty for illegal immigrants from Mexico. Math should make it obvious how disastrous that would be for the GOP as they would be increasing the size of a group that's heavily predisposed to vote against their policies.

As I've been noting, the obvious path to victory for Republicans is to consolidate support from white voters by being a party that looks out for white, working class people. That used to be how Democrats saw the path to winning elections in the pre-Obama era, it's how they won in the Obama era, and it's what Trump is doing right now with measures like this.

Now thus far Trump has been winning working class white voters by massive margins (as many as 65%!) while Clinton has been flipping around college-educated whites and is on pace to win more of them than Romney did...which makes for a pretty even race with Clinton ahead thanks to massive margins with minority voters.

Of course now that Clinton's health has officially been made a significant part of the campaign there's a chance that she'll lose some of that margin with college-educated voters, perhaps with some of the Romney folk joining with Trump, or perhaps she'll just fail to get the kind of minority turnout to make her margins there strong enough to win.

But many of us white, college-educated voters would never even began to guess that any of this could be the case from our social media timelines. You see, social media teaches us that the world is all about me, but in reality it's not.

5 trends that are changing both modern media and the country

The initial response to the internet age was a panic by some in print media that their product was going to go down and be replaced by blogs and less well accredited news sources. Then it turned out that the world wasn't ready for that yet and established, print media maintained its place by simply moving online.

Now however, media IS experiencing a major shift away from where it's been with alternative types of sites and even reporting growing in size and influence. There's even conspiracy theorizing out there right now that Trump is already "pivoting" away from trying to win the 2016 election and is instead looking to leverage his tremendous levels of support into building a media empire and establish the alt-right/nationalist voice as a permanent fixture in American political discourse.

I tend to think he may very well do that but still be looking to also win the election. He's capable of delegating and multi-tasking, after all. What's more, Trump has no chance in this election without new, alternative media outlets helping him out because the traditional ones are almost entirely in the tank for Clinton and the establishment. It would make sense for him to craft an emerging alt-media for use in this election or a future one.

The 2016 election proving to be a turning point in American politics in several regards but changes to the media structure is one of the big themes worth exploring. Here are five trends that are shifting how media works in the modern world and how that impacts the country's future.

1. The Establishment's major advantage is in access not quality

As a career journalist let me tell you how I go about researching and learning about the football teams I write about. First I go to the team site and/or the beat writers for direct access to the coaches and roster and try to figure out who comprises the team. I fill out a depth chart and take notes of stats and scheduling notes.

Then I go watch the film for myself and do all of the contextual analysis of what the players are doing, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how they project to an upcoming season or game. I don't go to the coaches for that information because A) they don't like to reveal those types of details and B) I have very limited access to them.

The beat writers have access to the coaches but they don't have the information I need because A) the coaches don't give it to them and the writers can't push limits with the coaches or they lose access, B) the beat writers don't know what I know. They couldn't answer many of my questions or know to ask them in the first place because they don't have the understanding of the game's schematics that I do.

The blogosphere has deeply broadened the pool of people that can do analysis and research and opened up opportunities for people to speculate and analyze that aren't beholden to maintaining access or friendly relationships with the people they are writing about.

Sometimes that means that bloggers go after people with unfair and inaccurate pieces...sometimes it means that they go after people with fair and accurate pieces that no one else would have written.

In my own experience I can tell you that I've written things that hardly anyone else in my market would have written due to knowledge I uniquely possess. Sometimes it's something that the University of Texas coaching staff would like to see someone write and sometimes it's not. Either way, they don't really have much choice in the matter like they do with the established media.

2. Monetization is hard and much of the media is unprofitable and subsidized

Donald Trump loves to refer to the New York Times as "the failing New York Times" for a reason besides the fact that they are his enemy and branding opponents as "losers" is one of his favorite pastimes. He's actually right that their business model is not proving to be financially profitable.

What many people don't realize is that much of the political media world out there is heavily subsidized by "the ruling class" or wealthy elites who like to influence American politics. Incidentally, these same people tend to favor open borders (cheaper labor and greater influence over the population!) and view Donald Trump as one of the worst things to ever happen to American politics because of his preference for border security.

Check out some of the established conservative media outlets that have been very strongly against Trump such as "The National Review" and look into their finances. You'll find that many of them are backed by big money and aren't even profitable outlets. Glenn Beck has been desperately trying to pivot "The Blaze" towards more moderate positions recently in order to find wealthy people that will buy him out due to the companies' financial struggles. Positions that seem to be virtuous on the surface are often actually guided by financial interest.

You also often hear people at RedState.com or theweeklystandard.com rail against figures like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh for "lacking the moral courage to stop Trump in the primary." Seriously, just google "Red State" and "Limbaugh" and you'll find article after article ripping him along those lines.

The real difference is that Limbaugh and Hannity depend on rank and file, working class listeners/viewers for their income while sites like Red State are subsidized by the wealthy elites. So when Hannity or Limbaugh noticed a groundswell of support for a guy like Trump, they understand that if they want their bread to stay buttered they'd better get out in front.

It's hard to make money online unless you have extraordinary traffic, something really good to sell beyond content, or content that is very difficult to come by. That latter is not the case for most in political media, you need either to be wildly popular or subsidized by powerful interests. Hannity and Limbaugh rely on popularity, Red State can lean more on what their backers want...to a point.

Established conservative outlets be like...

3. There's a growing preference for obvious bias over non-obvious bias

People love to find the echo chamber. If you're a conservative, clinging to hope that the Republicans can win this election, what sort of sites are you likely to traffic? Probably the ones that explain why this is still a realistic belief. I'm not sure Rasmussen does scientific polling anymore or just finds ways to manipulate their polls to sell to Republicans that want good news.

On the other side, Vox.com exists to carefully and comfortingly explain how whatever is happening in the world actually fits into the progressive narrative about how the world works.

We all seek these out. What happens every time something big and terrible happens in the world? You see everyone processing it out in real time on Facebook and explaining how this terrible event fits into their preferred political narrative while, really when you think about it, disproving the opposite side's narrative in dramatic fashion.

This is bad news for Establishment centers like the New York Times that have forever painted themselves as objective when in reality they are not. One of the good critiques that post-modernism brought to the thinking world is the realization that bias-free, objective thinking is not possible.

One of the results of the growth of blogging and online media platforms is that people are now more free to choose the clearly biased media outlets. If you're looking for someone that will sell a political narrative you are comfortable with then you may want some options besides the established media. Especially if they are capable of proving equally adept at it.

Conversely, wealthy elites can still find it quite easy to get their preferred narratives out because they can afford to subsidize a website like "the National Review" and attempt to shape the narrative without worrying about whether it will sell successfully or not. 

Just find an existing opinion tribe that you think you can manipulate in a few key areas and then build a site with writers telling them what they already want to hear while pushing a few key points to get what you want. College-educated opinion tribes are some of the most ripe for manipulation in this fashion because they are smart enough to convince themselves that this isn't what's happening.

4. The nation is increasingly diverse, so the opinions are as well

There are tons of niches to be filled in online media today. People tend to converge towards uniformity in opinion and outlook but only within a community. For instance, I've known several people that held unique, thoughtful political opinions before they were actually really interested in politics.

After they started becoming more interested in politics they'd read up on various websites and gradually their opinions would converge towards more mainstream ideologies or narratives. It's just a natural process and I've seen it happen on both sides. Semi-conservatives that had doubts or reservations about different conservative ideas became rank and file conservatives after reading thoughtful conservative commentators. Conservative people that favored Obama for one reason or another in 2008 and then gradually talked themselves into much of the modern progressive narrative after seeking out pro-Obama media and conversation.

There are pros and cons to this process. On the negative side, it snuffs out some original thinking in favor of whatever narrative/opinion shaping that is coming from the online sites, which again are often tools of influence for wealthy elites. However, it also snuffs out some dumb, poorly thought out ideas and promotes unity, which is a big positive.

The monkey wrench is that while people will tend to converge towards uniformity within their opinion tribe or community of the political sphere, there are increasingly large numbers of communities within the United States.

There is a TREMENDOUS divide right now between young, college-educated Evangelical Christians who are very suspicious of Donald Trump and older, working class Evangelical Christians that make up some of his strongest supporters. I'm in the former group and I regularly see or hear people saying things like "who are these Trump supporters that are voting for him?? I don't know ANYONE that likes him!!!"

Well, those people aren't in the world that you've formed by seeking out political discussion within the college-educated/evangelical community. They're in their own sphere of the internet wondering where these Republican holdouts are that keep preventing Trump from getting past the 45% threshold in the polls. Resentment on both sides is growing.

5. The diversity and insulation of opinion tribes might not a good thing for the future of the U.S.

It's easy to forget that a "state" is actually supposed to be a sovereign political entity and that "The United States" indicates that a diverse collection of political entities is looking to actively work together to form a single government and nation.

So while all of the trends above can lead to some very interesting developments in the political world where people throw away pretense of bias, welcome communal thinking, and empower non-establishment communities due to new options...none of that necessarily leads to a more United collection of states.

Another thing that is easy to forget is that less than 200 years ago there were diverging opinion tribes within this country that found their differences were strong enough to cause a highly destructive war.

Did you know that 1/4 of the Southern male population of fighting age was killed in the Civil War? Did you know that another 1/4 of that same population was permanently maimed by injuries? No Americans ever sacrificed more for any cause then did the American South for independence in the Civil War. Second place goes to the American North in the same conflict.

That happened when the U.S. consisted of the northern, industrial-based white Americans, southern, agricultural-based white Americans, and enslaved black peoples. Today in the U.S. there is an even larger number of discrepant people groups with disparate interests and priorities. Online media is making it easier for everyone to find their own opinion tribes and websites rather than all having to grudgingly accept a compromised, established media narrative that is formed largely from wealthy elites.

It's possible that this could lead to division and even conflict within the country. Note how confident everyone is on Facebook that their own preferred political narrative is the most noble, just, and true view while the others are deeply flawed and even evil...don't think that could lead to people being willing to come to blows if there's future division on issues that effect their lives?

To get back to the idea of Trump's "Alt-right media empire" and the nationalist voice gaining strength in American politics...that's going to happen whether Trump is a part of it or not. That's an opinion tribe that is gaining enough strength that people can profit from the traffic. What's more, many wealthy elites will probably hop aboard and join the movement so they can have influence.

Very interesting times we live in.

Hillary's flawed strategy for defeating Donald Trump

It's essentially the exact same strategy attempted by the Republican establishment which proved wildly ineffective (although I at one time bought in and thought it would work). That strategy is to play to college-educated voters who feel the current system of American politics is working for them and don't believe Trump is a serious presidential candidate worth taking a risk on.

These people are generally clustered in suburbs and cities and there's definitely a fair number of them. These were the people that were voting for Rubio or Kasich in the Republican primary and also swelled the ranks of people that ultimately propelled Clinton past Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

You can see the evidence of this being her strategy based on her recent selection of Virginia senator Tim Kaine as her VP and in the ways in which she's attacked and countered against Donald Trump.

Kaine is another establishment Democrat with a neo-liberal approach to foreign policy (he's backed free trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership) and the ability to pander speak in spanish to the Latino voters that they'll be counting on. He's also a fairly boring persona that won't upstage Clinton while allowing the campaign to double down on presenting voters with an option to continue business as usual with experienced leadership.

Her attacks on Trump have centered around labeling him as a racist, an authoritarian, and a dangerous mad man who will expose the country to grave risks due to his volatile nature and lack of experience. These are all attacks that will appeal to college-educated folks who perceive of themselves as being above racism and unwilling to take risks when things are going well enough.

Like in the GOP primary, I don't think that's a very strong strategy for the following reasons...

Problem One: Rebuilding the Obama coalition

The first problem with this strategy by Clinton is that the Obama coalition that propelled the Democrats into power back in 2008 was much broader than "risk-averse, college-educated voters."

Besides Bush losing traction with voters, the GOP also got swamped in 2008 by the fact that Obama brought a ton of new voters into the electorate so that whereas in 2004 we saw 121 million people vote, 2008 featured 129.3 million voters and 2012 still saw 126.8 million voters.

Even if McCain or Romney had enjoyed the appeal of Bush they still would have been trounced by Obama's ascendant coalition.

What Obama did so successfully was fire up the massive population of millennial voters entering the electorate and win their support with massive margins. Those millennial voters recently went for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and generally view Clinton very unfavorably.

Now wikileaks is releasing all of these Democratic National Committee emails indicating that the party conspired to stop Sanders and is filled with the kinds of corruption that Sanders was decrying during the primary.

So here's a closer view of the efforts by the Clinton campaign to get millennials to come out in large numbers again and vote for her over Donald Trump:

via GIPHY

Problem Two: Pointing and shrieking at Russia isn't a viable defense

One of the best ways to unite a diverse collection of people is to pit them against a common enemy. Investigations into the DNC leaks have suggested that Russia is behind the hack and that they are now releasing the data in an attempt to hurt Clinton and assist Trump. The Democrats have been keen to try and make this the prevailing narrative, "look how Putin is interfering in American politics!!!!!"

Of course, the Russians didn't write the emails where DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz conspired with fellow Democrats and media to stop Bernie Sanders, nor the emails where the party planned to reward big donors with government appointments. Sanders voters who feel cheated by the current American political system don't really care if they only know about the corruption thanks to Putin, the problem here is that the system seems rigged against them.

Trump is playing average Americans against the nation's ruling elites, Clinton is trying to unite them back behind the ruling elites and against the Russians.

But Russia just isn't viewed as being this horrifying opposing power anymore. Check out this Gallop survey on how Americans perceived Russia back in February. There will be some that are outraged that Russian interests are playing a role in the American election and there will be some that view Russia as having increased moral credibility due to their willingness to battle ISIS directly (at least nominally) and to expose DNC corruption.

Problem Three: Terrorism and national defense

The margins of victory that Clinton will need amongst college-educated voters to take down Trump's coalition is going to have to be pretty sizable. It's worth pausing to note that what Trump has essentially done is unite the two factions that fought each other in the Civil War, working class whites in both the North and the South, into one big party. That's likely to result in some pretty big voting numbers and 538 already has projections showing what kind of electoral map that's likely to produce in November.

That leaves this remaining problem for Clinton, which is overcoming the hurdle of her own hawkish foreign policy preferences combined with her weakness on rule of law issues. Do you know who loves feeling secured by the rule of law? College-educated folk living in suburbs or gentrified, urban locales.

Clinton's warm embrace the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which has started to come across more negatively amongst security-loving suburbanites after a rash of shootings that victimized police officers, is a problem for her. It may help her maintain Obama's large margins of victory with black Americans but potentially at the cost of losing margins with other demographics.

Then there's the terrorism issue, which wasn't a major part of the 1992, 1996, 2008, or 2012 elections and isn't an area where Clinton has a great record to sell.

Between Clinton and her husband:

-They fell on the side of Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs back in the late '90s, which had some negative results for the Serbs.

-She supported the takedown of Saddam Hussein in Iraq as a N.Y. senator, a secular dictator who kept terrorism at bay in that state.

-She initiated the takedown of Muammar Gaddafi, a secular dictator who kept terrorism at bay in Libya.

-She wants to allow more refugees from Syria into the United States.

-She favors more open borders.

Clinton's policy preferences, like those of the rest of establishment in either party, have demonstrated a clear pattern of creating greater disorder and empowerment of radical Islam abroad combined with fewer safeguards from allowing that disorder or ideology to spread domestically. They're often so caught up in playing political chess with Russia that they forget that Americans are much more concerned with the blowback of failing to address radical Islam than they are oil prices in the Balkans.

College-educated voters may not see Trump's protectionism as being necessary or helpful but many of them may feel that a Trump presidency has a greater chance of keeping them safe from the threats of increased crime or domestic terrorism. This is why the force of Trump's convention speech was assuming the mantle as the "law and order candidate."

Clinton is trying to terrify voters into believing that Trump is the next Hitler, Trump is looking to terrify voters into believing that Clinton will allow disorder to spread across the United States. When you turn on the news at night, which of those two scenarios seems more likely?

The upshot is that her play for winning big margins with that demographic is probably not strong enough to generate the needed margins of victory. Combine that with her utter lack of appeal to millennial voters and the likely decreasing margins there and you have a recipe for a Democratic disaster in November.

The end of Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz understood the potential of the "doomsday scenario" well before much of the rest of the Republican party. The GOP has long desired to be able to play offense on the electoral map and not rely on surviving from attacks in Ohio and Florida every four years and the strategy for doing so has always been obvious from a mathematical perspective.

The problem has commonly been diagnosed as the GOP lacking Hispanic votes in a nation where Hispanic share of the population is on the rise. However, that analysis can be demonstrated to be fatally flawed by simply examining the "turn Texas blue!" attempts by Texas Democrats. Hispanic population surges are largely focused in places where Republicans aren't really at any risk of losing ground politically, like Texas, and the reasons are twofold.

One is that Hispanics simply don't vote in great numbers. I remember sitting in a Texas history class at UTSA back in 2005 with a professor who was a seasoned veteran of in-state politics that had a wife who was the city manager of San Antonio. Amongst our required reading was a book called "the life and times of Willie Velasquez" who was a Chicano leader that made it his mission to register Latinos to vote. Simply getting his people to the polls was a very difficult struggle in the effort to improve their lot in life.

This reality has been largely lost on white liberals nationally that have perceived immigration as a pathway to electoral dominance and perhaps conveniently ignored by establishment Republicans pushing for an outreach campaign to Latino voters and immigration policies that happen to benefit the major corporations that love to donate to their campaigns.

Anyways, the last effort to take down Texas Republicans was in the 2014 gubernatorial election when the insulated Democrats in Austin put forth Wendy Davis as their candidate. I'm not sure why they thought that a Ivy-league educated blonde woman famous for standing up for abortion was going to be a hit with the Hispanic voters they were counting on but it backfired spectacularly.

The Republican Greg Abbott crushed Davis 59.3% to 38.9%. Hispanic voters only went to Davis by a 55-44 margin, which is nothing compared to the 71% that Obama got nationally, and Texas turnout was low.

The other reason the emphasis on Hispanic voters approach doesn't work is that down south, the Republicans generally get support from both evangelicals and working class white families (obviously in many instances, there is considerable overlap whereas in the north they are more distinct). With white voters over represented at the polls and marching behind a single banner politically they are pretty hard to beat.

Getting aggressive with the electoral map doesn't require that Republicans do a better job of reaching out to a group that is more naturally inclined to the Democrats and naturally disinclined to participate in the first place.

The key is uniting white working class families across the entire US with evangelical voters. That was Ted Cruz's plan but Donald Trump is the one that actually pulled it off.

Trump is now continuing to try and build that coalition, ultimately choosing Mike Pence to try and shore up the evangelical community rather than looking to project more strength by choosing Gen. Flynn.

As for Cruz, he accepted an opportunity to speak at the Republican National Convention and he had a major choice ahead of him. He could either

A) Make peace with the coalition of voters he had intended to represent and champion by nominally endorsing Trump and then biding his time to see if it became necessary to wait him out or else try to fully hop aboard later.

B) Try to make peace with the establishment by refusing to endorse Trump.

It seems that Cruz thought that if he used lawyerly terms like "don't stay home in November" and "vote your conscience" perhaps he could fool the voters into believing he was still on their side but it didn't work. The "Lyin Ted" moniker had already ruined any chances of that. He was booed off the stage by the delegates.

Meanwhile, Cruz has no realistic shot of making real headway with the establishment either, who largely despise him and will only use him as a tool to the extent that he's useful. He might have been useful for appealing to anti-establishment voters before but certainly not now.

By refusing to acknowledge the choices of the very group of people he hoped to champion, Cruz has now eliminated his chances of successfully running for president in the future. Either Trump will win and he'll be left bitterly watching from the sideline or Trump will lose and voters won't forget Cruz's part in helping to take him down. His best chances at major relevance now are as a career Senator or perhaps finding his way to the Supreme Court where his disagreeable nature would likely be perceived as less of a liability.

American evangelicals have just lost a talented and effective politician, machiavellian and ambitious as he may have been. The 2016 election continues forward like a wrecking ball through the status quo political landscape.

"The world turned upside down"

That was the name of the tune that the British allegedly played when General Cornwallis' army was surrendering to George Washington at Yorktown in 1781. The most powerful empire around the world had just been defeated by their own colonies and a rather irregular army in a shocking upset.

Now, 235 years later, it's pretty common for the established powers to go down when battling natives on their own soil.

The U.S. military is regularly going down when battling "4th generation" forces (fighters that aren't affiliated with a state but with a tribe or cause) despite tremendous advantages in money, technology, and resources.

In the political world, the whole weight of the U.K. political establishment and the European Union was unable to prevent "Brexit," which was essentially the native English people choosing British sovereignty over globalized governance over and against the wish to remain by Scotland, North Ireland, and immigrant-heavy London.

The struggles of the United States political establishment to win victories against the local upstart, nationalist outsider has also been stark. It started with Trump beating Jeb Bush (choice of the party elites) senseless in the polls and early GOP primaries.

The most stark example was when Trump went into South Carolina, which was expected to be an establishment "firewall," and ripped Jeb's brother George for "failing to stop 9/11" and incurring a firestorm of anger and hatred from virtually everyone in the Republican party.

Many expected for this to be the moment where Trump finally faltered. Instead he won South Carolina with 32.5% of the vote in a crowded field. Second place was basically a tie between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz who had 22.5% and 22.3% respectively. Jeb got 7.8%, zero delegates, and was forced out of the race in humiliating fashion.

Now we come to the general election. It's common for insiders like the 538 bloggers to regularly mock Trump for failing to raise money, or for establishment friendly conservative pundits to caution that without support from the nation's elites that Trump can't win a general election against Clinton.

In general, the common wisdom is that you can't win a battle for the country without major dollars. Everyone is still operating under the same underlying assumptions that the Pentagon has about warfare.

"You can't beat the U.S. military with home made bombs and rusty AK47s!!!"

Well apparently you can, and in an age of DVR and increased skepticism towards the ruling elites, it's very much in question whether dropping ad bombs across the airwaves is actually that useful.

In fact, judging by recent swing state polls and campaign spending, there's some question about whether taking enormous campaign donations from the wealthy and using them on ads is beneficial at all:

In modern warfare between a foreign state and a 4th generation opponent, having superior weaponry and being able to drop bombs safely from a distance is actually a major weakness. Why? Because it's seen as bullying, it turns the local resistance into an underdog that the natives root for, and it ties the bomber in with the very political establishment that people don't trust.

Victory for the establishment has to come in the form of them maintaining control over an area and they can't control the area if they are seen as illegitimate bullies.

The same is now true for American politics. Voters on either side are not confident that the ruling elites in either party are actually acting in the everyday man's best interest. Clinton's Wall Street cash grabs and massive spending tends to underscore the fact that she's the choice of the elites and that the last thing they want is for Trump to win.

What happens if everyday Americans increasingly see Trump as the only true, American option and Hillary as the figure head for an oppressive elite?

The world has been turned upside down and the factors that used to determine elections don't quite matter as much anymore.

Potential VP General Flynn and what conservative pundits can't seem to understand

Donald Trump is rumored to be heavily considering retired General Michael T. Flynn as his VP choice. The retired general, in his own words, believes that combating radical Islam is THE issue of our times as a Western civilization and says Obama's administration pushed him out for insisting on this viewpoint.



You could definitely see why Trump would be drawn to a figure like this, it's basically doubling down on his potential advantage over Hillary Clinton in the general election as the candidate who can make Americans feel safer. What's more, it's an effective counter to the Clinton camp attack line that Trump is unstable and likely to push the US into a disastrous military conflict.

Given the Clintons' own predilection for disastrous overseas ventures then juxtaposed with a respected, former Democrat General who was appointed head of the Defense Intelligence Agency by Barack Obama himself, Flynn would be an effective political foil to much of the Clinton strategy.

And that background is basically all you need to understand why Republican and Democrat establishment figures are highly opposed to the eventuality of Flynn being named VP.

The Democrat case, always easily explained by reading a Vox.com article "explaining" Gen. Flynn, makes a Hillary case for why he'd be awful on Trump's ticket by pointing and shrieking at the following facts:

1. Flynn is an "alarmist" in describing radical Islam as America's main enemy!

Of course, most Americans would probably at least sympathize with that view if they don't buy it whole sale. Multiple terrorist attacks on American soil in the span of a few years combined with the rise of radical Islam worldwide will tend to have that effect.

2. Flynn is sympathetic to Russia!

The establishment on either sides' repeated attempts to cast Russia as America's ultimate foe in these times always makes me chuckle. As though the memory of the Cold War was still so strong that Americans were more likely to view white Christians as the main enemy rather than Muslim middle easterners. We'll get back to that identity issue in a moment but suffice to say that Americans are much more worried about being blown up by radical Islamists than they are anything that Putin might get up to.

3. Flynn butted heads with Obama and the Pentagon establishment!

Flynn felt alone in ascribing the threat level to terrorism that is now probably taken for granted amongst Americans if not the White House. Obama and the Pentagon didn't like that...I think the more Americans learn about Flynn's battle with the military establishment and commander-in-chief the more they'll come to respect him and the angrier they'll grow with the latter. Especially if he's given a platform as a VP to broadcast how his concerns over America's strategy for combating terrorism were overruled.

4. Flynn believes in sending troops into the Middle East!

This one is actually somewhat alarming to me as well. I'm glad one of the presidential candidates is looking at listening to someone who understands that the West's conflict with radical Islam is a serious one but I favor more of a defensive, Byzantine approach to this problem then a Templar crusade strategy.

The Republican establishment is also furious about Trump potentially ignoring the "need for party unity" and choosing a(nother) lifelong Democrat to run by his side.

Consequently they (and many liberal pundits as well) are making a big case out of Flynn's pro-choice positions and ambivalence towards protecting traditional marriage.

Here are the two big factors conservative pundits are missing here.

1. Social conservatives don't really have much of a choice in this election.

Hillary Clinton will make several liberal appointments to the Supreme Court and push through any socially liberal legislation that gets through congress if she's elected president. There are no doubts here, a Clinton presidency would be a disaster for the conservative cause and likely lead to a long-standing super majority of liberals on the Supreme Court.

Libertarian Gary Johnson would likely be a disaster for social conservatives here as well, besides the consideration that he has a zero percent chance of winning an election.

Trump has at least promised to make conservative judicial appointments and even released a list of names he was considering to help give evangelicals some peace about electing him. Could he betray them? Possibly. Is the selection of socially moderate/liberal/ambivalent General Flynn an indication he would betray social conservatives? Probably not, Flynn's focus on the ticket would be military and defense reform and honestly I don't think Flynn cares about much else.

There aren't any real options here for social conservatives other than to make some kind of hopeless protest vote or else ride with Trump and hope for the best. Staying home or switching their vote to Hillary would be to deal themselves a defeat in the culture wars that would take at least a decade to overcome.

2. The 2016 election is about tribal identity and identity is much stronger than any other issue on the table.

Trump's play overall has been about nationalism and the conservation of Western civilization itself. The Orlando attacks and the way he sought to rally the LGBT community with the evangelicals already in his fold was indicative of how Trump is looking to move beyond the "conservative vs liberal" battle for supremacy over American politics and instead assert the need for first maintaining America as a traditional Western nation.

Conservative pundits think that conservative voters care first and foremost about being told what they want to hear on social issues because that's been the tactic of most every major Republican candidate for the last several elections. In fact, tribal identity as Americans in a Western nation is a much, much stronger motivator and the major reason why Trump won the primary despite being shaky on several traditional Republican issues.

Many typical American voters are concerned that their country is going away. There's no point in squabbling with liberals over everyday politics if globalization turns America into a true multicultural state that isn't primarily defined by Anglo-American values. In that event, ultimate victory in the culture wars is completely hopeless. What's more, if conservative leaders aren't going to protect them from seeing their communities flooded by potentially radicalized immigrants as they've seen happen in Europe then self-preservation kicks in.

In terms of politics and building an appealing "America first" identity brand for the election, I think Flynn would be a remarkably effective VP choice for Trump. The GOP establishment knows it and are desperate that Trump not be successful in rebuilding the party into something where they are marginalized. His victory in the 2016 election would be the worst kind of disaster for Paul Ryan and the establishment wing, worse than Clinton winning. The Democrats know Flynn would be effective as well for his ability to elucidate their failures in combating radical Islam and are just as desperate to see this stopped.

Meanwhile the Doomsday scenario is becoming increasingly likely with every emerging national trend.

Four accurate depictions of human struggle in the grim Hunger Games series

Not even the nation's young females are holding back from consuming entertainment that presents grim, violent possibilities for the world's future these days. Dystopian, young adult epics have been all the rage these days and "The Hunger Games" series by Suzanne Collins has unquestionably been the most successful.

I'll admit I read the entire trilogy, although I thought it really went downhill after book one. That said, after seeing the first movie I was pretty confident that the follow-up films were going to be much stronger than the book sequels because it's a story that translates better to film. Sure enough, it did.

Of course, they pulled in a remarkably strong team of film people and actors to put it together. Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Woody Harrelson did awesome work in this series to say nothing of how the series hit the jackpot by casting Jennifer Lawrence in the lead role.

I finally saw Mockingjay part II the other night and wanted to give some thoughts on the series' themes.

Don't read if you want to avoid spoilers*

Theme 1: Elites on the inside, poor out to the burbs

For several decades in the US the phenomenon of "white flight" led to the inner city featuring decay while urban sprawl and suburbs began populated by most of the nation's wealthier citizens. However, through the process of gentrification you're now seeing wealthy white people reclaim cities and drive poorer black folk out to the suburbs through pricing.

"Our prices discriminate so we don't have to."

Ironically, many of the nation's most liberal cities are the worst offenders of this phenomenon with San Francisco, New York, and Austin some notable examples. Even Oakland is getting there as people who want to live in San Francisco but can't quite afford to get in are settling for Oakland and turning it into a hipster depot.

One of the central themes of the Hunger Games is how the ruling elites live in the city with its well maintained infrastructure and impressive architecture while the poor dregs of society are cast out to the suburbs and controlled with the brutal bread and circus "Hunger Games" process.

Collins was really on point here with her sense of where things are headed, you wonder if liberal white Americans are pausing to consider if their current policies are leading to a similar type of dystopian future in which the nation's minority groups are on the outside looking in. Obviously it'd be nice to avoid that kind of result.

Theme 2: The moral level is the strongest in war

The depictions of the politics of warfare in "Mockingjay" parts I and II" are really some of the best I've seen at the movies. It's a tad ironic, given that it's a young adult series with a female hero aimed largely at a young female audience. Clearly Collins also has a strong grasp of the emotional side of war, the power of rhetoric, the effectiveness of "soft power," and the supremacy of morals in a fight.

As William S. Lind put it in his grid for evaluating actions in war:

The moral level of war trumps the mental AND the physical.

A smaller group of people with more to fight for will generally beat the larger group with less motivation because war and struggle is difficult and doing what it takes to win requires serious dedication and emotional commitment.

Throughout the entire series the "Mockingjay" affects tremendous change by being an example and a hero to people that gives them the fight they need to overcome the resources of the capital and the brutality of President Snow.

Of course Catniss barely cares about all of that, she's just doing what's natural to her, which makes it all the more powerful and effective.

You see this in politics all the time, the people who can be charismatic naturally always demolish the people who have an affected, corporate feel to their rhetoric and appeals.

If you haven't seen Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) break down the differences in Trump and Clinton in persuasion this appearance on Bill Maher's program was surprisingly effective at communicating what's going on:

When I heard Adams was going on Maher's show I figured he'd be shouted down by Bill's typical snarky condescension but he wasn't. Maher must respect Adams, perhaps because he's a fellow atheist, but I digress.

Theme 3: Fairly traditional gender roles

It's hilarious that whenever women are responsible for creating excellent entertainment products they usually don't adhere to feminist-approved depictions of gender but generally draw their female characters pretty realistically and do the same for the men. Better emotional awareness, imo.

It's with liberal male authors that you see the most ridiculous female characters as they draw the most ridiculous portraits of what women really look like while intending to create "strong female characters" that generally just behave like men.

Catniss is entirely believable as a strong female character. She needs emotional support in her life, she is routinely bested in physical combat when she can't rely on shooting people from a distance (it's ridiculous in films when we're asked to believe that 5'6" 100 pound models could realistically take down a pack of 6'2" 240 pound male goons), and her motivations are purely feminine.

The reason that Catniss works is because her skill in the midst of dystopian horror is simply figuring out how to survive and stand tall. That's what real feminine strength looks like, not aping James Bond's detached approach to murder or emotional connection, or Bruce Wayne's explosive strength and ability to take a punch.

Theme 4: From revolution to revulsion

The one place where the movie series failed was in the depiction of President's Coin descent from ideologue purist to power-hungry totalitarian. They do a good job of setting that development up in the movie, but there's no character development for Coin that explains how and why she ended up succumbing to the temptations of power.

It's a shame, because everything else about the series was really artfully done and captures what real life characters and motivations look, and we've seen people go from ideologues to control-obsessed totalitarians all too many times in the course of human history.

However, Snow and Coin were both a little bit cartoonish in this regard. Snow is portrayed as the ultimate machiavellian but he's just a little too comfortable in his own shoes as a brutal dictator. In real life such people would be at much greater pains to justify themselves to everyone. I guess you could make the same complaint of most villains in film though.

Meanwhile Coin, she just flips a switch at some point off screen and becomes something similar. The movie focuses on developing how Catniss figures out that she needs to be stopped rather than ever showing a hint at what's happening in Coin's soul. It's a shame, because it makes the film's climax and twist less effective.

My favorite depiction in modern entertainment of the human tendency to overthrow evil only to succumb to the same temptation and fall just as hard remains this scene from "The Office"

Truly the quest for power over other humans is just an attempt to wield something out of our control and often ultimately useless.

We have to learn from Catniss or Captain America and effect change in other people through virtuous example, not cynical attempts to exercise control directly. After all, that's how our Lord did it.

3 powerful themes from "Captain America: Civil War"

I think Captain America 3: Civil War may have been the strongest film yet in the Marvel universe. It's a tough call given how tremendously entertaining "the Avengers" was and how quirky and brilliant "Guardians of the Galaxy" turned out to be. Nevertheless, it was great and it got better on reflection.

I was clued in to two brilliant reviews of "Civil War," both by Devin Faraci who does good work over at Birthmoviesdeath.com. I recommend them both for the way they help you process and understand the movie and also because Faraci explains things in a way that make it easier to offer my own thoughts on the movie.

Don't read these or anything below if you are looking to avoid spoilers*

The first explains why Civil War is in fact a Captain America movie, continuing the tale of friendship and loyalty between Steve Rogers and his pal Bucky.

The second explains the importance of Spider-Man's role in capturing one of the main themes of the film: which is taking personal responsibility vs looking to pass it off.

I noticed three major themes that gave this blockbuster some real punch. As I noted with Guardians of the Galaxy, sometimes the blockbusters made for mass audiences have deeper and more powerful truths than the more artsy films nominated for Oscars.

Theme 1: Taking real responsibility

America today is filled to the brink with people who feel the weight of responsibility and are trying to pass it off through processes that aren't actually helpful or wise, much as Iron-Man did. I've got an everyday example that I think will drive this point home: The bureaucratic processes at your job.

Y'all know what I'm talking about. The way modern institutions work is as follows:

1. Something goes terribly wrong due to oversight or moral failure on the part of an employee.

2. The company promises to make sure this will never happen again.

3. The company institutes bureaucratic process and documentation to protect themselves in the future without actually decreasing the chances of future problems.

4. The new process overloads employees in paper work and leads someone to commit a different oversight or moral failure.

5. Company promises to make sure this will never happen again...

If you've worked for any heavily regulated business like the medical field or education you know what I'm talking about and even if you don't this style of problem solving is probably pervasive enough that you still know exactly what I'm talking about.

This is the sin of Iron Man in "Civil War" he's not looking to actually own the problem and own the solution, he's looking for bureaucratic solutions that can absolve him of guilt. Just like your HR department.

Theme 2: A system is only as good as the people involved

We could just as easily call this section "why ideology is useless." The Captain's concluding monologue included the line,

"My faith's in people, I guess. Individuals. And I'm happy to say that, for the most part, they haven't let me down. Which is why I can't let them down either."

The essence of Captain America's character in the Marvel films has always been about moral leadership. He was chosen for the serum because he had enough character to be trusted not to abuse the power. Defeating the Nazis (or Hydra I guess) couldn't just be about wielding power but had to be balanced with caution, and that caution centered around who was allowed to wield the power.

American political debate generally centers around policy prescriptions and the underlying ideologies. When a policy or government works or doesn't work then people on both sides will rush to explain why the opposing ideology was to blame or how their own ideology shouldn't take the fall for this particular failure.

It's all a smokescreen, ideology matters considerably less than who's wielding power and the character and motives of the people at the top.

Take a look at the wide variety of different political systems in place in the Bible and tell me when God affirms or disapproves of leadership because of their ideology. He doesn't, because he's much more concerned with what they're doing and why they're doing it.

Theme 3: Greater love hath no one than this...

The way Captain America challenges us to consider moral authority as the primary qualification for leadership and power is a very worthy message. Civil War does a great job pitting that qualification against the notion of trusting instead in bureaucracy or ideology.

The problem anyone will point to as a justification for siding with #TeamIronMan is that humans aren't worthy of that trust. That's why we have the law, bureaucratic oversight, and ideologies, so that humans can be guided to the proper course of action.

But as the Captain intuitively understands and demonstrates, these are are ultimately untrustworthy. Being relational beings, what humans need above all other things is an example...

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being borne in the likeness of men. 

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."

We don't really have a choice but to respond to Christ-like self sacrifice and service. It's inherent to mankind to respond and trust ultimately in that example. The message of the Captain America series is ultimately that of the gospel, and almost certainly unintentionally so.

That's the power of Jesus' example, that "at his name every knee should bow," it's simply not possible to point to higher truth without pointing to him.

Everyone loves Iron Man, he's hilarious and he's flawed in a way that makes it easy to connect to him. Either you think you're like Iron Man or you wish you were, that's what makes him the perfect antagonist to have to respond to the Christ-like example of the Captain.

I know these are ultimately just silly superhero movies but they still represent our ideals and ourselves as we'd like to see them or they couldn't resonate. Rather than chasing some kind of grim, violent depiction of the world where we can feel safe to fail to aspire to any higher examples, Captain America instead points us to the cross.

That's why his weapon is actually a shield and that's why these Marvel films are some of the most enjoyable and powerful movies coming out these days.

Why Reagan's conservatism is dead

Across Europe we're seeing a major increase in the number of nationalist parties who are fighting for their nations to remain ethnically homogenous, outside of the EU, and free to govern themselves based on their own people's preferences.

Some of these groups are fairly liberal in how they'd like their elected leaders to govern the state, others are somewhat "conservative" in the American/Reaganite sense, all of them are nationalistic.

Normally US politics are about a decade or so behind the rest of Europe and American conservatism has basically been a gradual retreat on the various progressive issues of the West. The US govt has become increasingly expansive in scope with only occasional, half-hearted checks such as Chief Justice affirming Obamacare while setting limitations on the interpretation of the Commerce Clause.

That kind of, "okay we'll let this one slide, but please don't do something like this again," move has defined GOP conservatism for years and years now.

Intermixed in this fighting withdrawal has been the rise of "neo-conservatism" in which the Republican party abandoned their classical, "just war doctrine", defensive views on foreign policy in favor of aggressive interventionism across the globe and the establishment of a "Pax Americana" in which the US led the way in establishing order in the world...or trying to, at least.

Along with these global interests came a policy that's been described as "invade the world, invite the world" as the US turned the spigot on immigration in the 1960s and have allowed the nation to be flooded with immigrants from all over the planet.

Since that time, the US has seen about 60 million legal immigrants enter the nation along with an untold number of illegal immigrants perhaps as great as 10-20 million.

The US was seriously impacted by the introduction of millions of Irish and northern-European immigrants in the 1800's but the impact has been nothing like the introduction of people from all across the world over the last 50 years.

There have been two results from these policies that have killed Reaganite conservatism in America.

Result 1: "Pax Americana" has been expensive and not particularly effective

Thanks to the rise of Islamic terrorism and the tremendous failures of either US foreign or domestic policy to curtail it, Americans don't currently feel terribly safe. Regime changes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have destabilized the Middle East and turned once reasonably stable states into cesspools where increasingly radical groups such as ISIS have been able to flourish.

Meanwhile the plan at home has been to continue to allow immigration from these unstable regions while increasing surveillance. This has led to less freedom (and convenience) for Americans yet has totally failed to eliminate the possibilities of domestic terrorism.

The cost of these policies has been astronomical. Currently the US has a military budget of $596 billion dollars, which is more than the next seven countries combined. I'd say that's an expensive bill for the taxpayer but since the US is approaching $20 trillion it's really the future taxpayer that's on the hook.

Reagan ultimately succeeded in helping Americans feel safer from the threat of Soviet nuclear weapons, but that's not been the case in the battle against Islamic radicalism. Nor is there any coherent strategic proposal on the table that would achieve that result.

Result 2: Raising Western children is becoming increasingly expensive

This is really the biggest problem facing all of Western Civilization and the number one reason that the rise of nationalism was inevitable.

Currently 1/3 of millennials say they don't even intend to have children, typically citing the high cost and responsibility of doing so. The US birth rate is at around 2.0, or replacement level (two parents need to combine to create two children or else the population will decrease), but reaching the replacement level has only been achieved thanks to higher birth rates from immigrant populations. Particularly the more family-oriented Mexicans who are due to become the majority in multiple US States within our lifetimes.

Now here's the element of this issue that people don't like to talk about.

Replacing middle-class Americans with European ancestry with poorer Mexican immigrants really changes the nation in a major way. What's more, it actually decreases the likelihood of white Americans having more children.

One of the effects of mass immigration has been the creation of multiple neighborhoods across the country that are segregated by ethnicity as "white flight" leads whites to establish new neighborhoods where they can be less concerned with violent crime or under-performing schools.

That's not a popular thing to say but it's transparently obvious in every part of the US. White Americans move into as lily-white a neighborhood as they can afford. The stated reasoning is generally a concern about crime or schools, yet the ethnic segregation that results is particularly stark.

As the populations of latinos rises, the costs of that segregation become more expensive and housing prices in the desirable areas goes up. So raising a family in a "crime-free area with good schools" becomes increasingly expensive.

At the same time, the increase in immigration has a profound impact on the supply and demand curve for the price of labor. If you have a greater supply of labor, the price goes down, and the increase of available labor in the US has seen real wages drop or stagnate.

It's hard to get the top paying jobs in the US anymore without a college degree, or often even a post-grad degree. The US govt has sought to make these increasingly available by offering debt to anyone and everyone who wants to pursue college without any kind of discrimination (except understandably against those who can afford college without debt).

The result is that we've seen a massive increase in the number of schools operating AND and a tremendous increase in the cost of education (if you artificially increase the demand for education, the price goes up), both paired with stagnating or decreasing wages for average Americans.

So if you want to be a part of the American middle-class, living in the choice neighborhoods, you have to potentially be ready to take on tens of thousands in debt for your education followed by taking on hundreds of thousands in debt to buy the necessary real estate. Very expensive.

I'll point out now that Trump (and Sanders) have been dominating at the polls amongst the white Americans who are either on the outside looking in that can't afford all these increasing costs or who have children who are on the outside looking in that can't afford all these increasing costs.

Trump blames out of control immigration, Sanders blames selfish billionaires who make policy to benefit themselves, both are actually correct.

That's the real reason why there's all this "anti-establishment" anger right now. Ceding ground in the culture wars is bad enough for everyday GOP voters but when they can see the promise of the American dream slipping away while you do nothing? Now you're really in trouble. Same story for young white liberals who want to live the good life in progressive paradises like San Francisco but can't afford the costs, Clinton ain't earning their trust.

The new conservatism

The rallying cry of the #NeverTrump movement has been that Trump isn't a true conservative and he can't be trusted to protect Reagan's movement. This is totally true in the sense that Trump isn't a conservative in the Reaganite sense and he absolutely cannot be trusted to protect the conservative movement's agenda as it has existed since the 70s and 80s.

The problem for conservative pundits and establishment figures is that most Americans don't care about that.

Cutting taxes for the wealthy, resisting massive government expansion, and continuing to wage expensive wars abroad don't do anything whatsoever to deal with the issues preventing most Americans from realizing the lives they want.

You can see this evidenced in online images like this one:

The main problem facing Western civilization is the increased cost of raising Western children, and raising children is the God-given, natural impulse of most all humans.

The solution from both parties, Republican and Democrat, has been essentially to replace Western peoples with immigrants (who, incidentally will work for lower wages and enrich their donors) and then rely on education to teach them to become productive citizens in a Western society.

The dubious effectiveness of America's public schools effectively imparting over a thousand years' worth of values and genetics aside, the result has been increased costs and anxiety for traditional Western Americans.

To further exasperate this issue, Democrats have taken to playing identity politics and rallying various minority groups to their banner by painting white males as this evil, hoarding group that is looking to prevent the minorities from grabbing their own fair share of the American pie.

Liberal Democrats have never been too great at foreseeing the consequences of their policies and now we are seeing the inevitable result. The rise of nationalism.

Trump's "doomsday" electoral strategy is to rally white Americans who feel that the policies of both liberals and conservatives are now actively working against their interests. New conservatism won't be about limited government vs expansive government, but about conserving the interests of traditional Westerners and non-Westerners who got in on the America project early and are now losing just as much.

You take a look at Trump's propositions (or some of Bernie Sanders') and you see that play out:

1. A more defensive foreign policy focused on protecting Americans and saving money.

2. Much tighter controls on immigration.

3. Protectionist trade policy intended to boost the kinds of American businesses that produce middle-class jobs.

4. Increase in the minimum wage.

5. Increased taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

There are several more policies that will likely grow in popularity and get greater mention in the future but new conservatism is going to Trump Reagan conservatism (sorry for the pun).

One of those movements has failed for years to protect the most innate interests of Westerners and the other is promising to put America first. It's a no contest struggle. The days of limited government, or nominal resistance to the expansion of government, are done. Over. The GOP isn't going to be able to trot out a Reaganite-conservative in 2020 and win diddly squat in an election. Ain't gonna happen.

My personal hope is that all of this can go down without a further increase in ethnic tension that leads to violence. In a coming column I'll talk about how America's large evangelical population can try to work to mitigate the risks of this national transition.