A question for Americans.

I'd like to apologise in advance for any pre-conception my title may have conjured in your minds. Please see this more as an open debate on the direction America is headed, with the slant being towards the political personalities being offered forward to you.

My question, keeping the first point in mind, is this: How do you reconcile your two choices now (lets be honest, that's what it is now) for POTUS? Does it worry you at all that the two options now being padded (Hillary and Trump) are BOTH provably psychopathic, BOTH are provably Narcissistic and BOTH have pasts mired in more controversy than even the most corrupt of political figures - even people like Assad?

What is going to become of your once great nation? I fear for the future at the moment and, after a while pondering both these outcomes I can only see one thing happening (though I'd love to be corrected mind you) and that is more war (possible a world war with the rhetoric - especially with Hillary) more Orwellian state-ism, more corrupt economic practices (especially with Trump) and an overall total collapse of anything that remotely used to resemble a great nation, a great family loving nation.

Lets looks at these two people being touted as the next 'most powerful person in the world'...

Trump: In 2006, Trump bought the Menie Estate in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, creating a highly controversial golf resort, against the wishes of local residents, on an area designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

He also stated "And the other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families," he reiterated. "They care about their lives, don't kid yourselves. They say they don't care about their lives. But you have to take out their families."

“Laziness is a trait in the blacks. ... Black guys counting my money! I hate it.” Now this is both unbelievable and lets be honest, racist.

My impression of this man is, as stated, a moronic imbecile - surrounded by 'yes men' who has never had a real responsibility in his life that didn't include counting money. Yes he might be 'business smart' but those kinds of people invariably lack empathy and remorse and show little humility. Is this the new face of America?

Sound like a good candidate? More blood-lust, tightly packaged into a little narcissistic bundle with a smattering of "I couldn't give a f***"...

Hillary: "We came out of the White House not only dead-broke, but in debt. We had no money when we got there and we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea's education. It was not easy." HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” — Hillary Clinton makes up a ridiculous, untrue story about her trip to Bosnia. Er? What?

"There’s a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer." -- Hillary Clinton on Bashar Assad.

These are the choices you are given? How is this possibly a winning situation? Where is the hope here? Is there any? What's your opinion ATS?

I will not accept the 'lesser of two evils' position either because, to put it simply, the evil of BOTH these candidates is far, far greater than most people I've ever met.

I didn't go into Benghazi or any other deep matter that speaks to these candidates backgrounds as it's a source of constant frustration and speculation, instead I've used facts and their own words to criminalize them. How do you feel about this? Is the hope gone?

Or are we hoping that Neither of these people will be the two options? Which, lets be honest, is looking increasingly unlikely.

a reply to: Joneselius

America doesn't own the rights to having bad political leaders. I'm sure other countries have had bad political leaders and survived.

We've survived worse. Remember Barak Obama?

a reply to: DBCowboy

You haven't answered anything I asked at all.

I didn't say America owns the rights at all, I'm merely asking how, as the 'greatest nation on Earth' can you reconcile these two choices as anything other than utterly ludicrious.

Barack Obama was, pretty much, unknown until his presidential race. These two people are not unknown, we KNOW their fruits and their labours.

You honestly think Obama is worse than Trump and Hillary? Even given their backgrounds and their provable lack of tact and empathy? Hillary LAUGHED at someone's death for crying out loud.....

So I'll ask you again, what do you think this means for the future? This time without changing subject to Obama please.

There's bad leaders then there's the bat-# insane, crazy leaders - Hillary and Trump are the latter.

I don't have a clue as to your ideas about life and politics and such, but I am a Trump supporter and I agree with many of his quotes above. Hillary however is a nightmare. It's interesting that you cluster them that way; I think they are poles apart.

When I first became aware of Trump and his desire to become President, what I most liked was his bluntness. It seems he speaks the truth. This is truth that many people believe but few will express. I think his core power is that- saying what many people believe but won't say.

a reply to: Joneselius

Well we have Jacob Zuma at the moment. I've always figured it doesn't really matter, because it's Africa... Until I saw this man trying to count. He can't read numbers.. at all... When I saw that it stirred a feeling of great shame within my soul, it made me hang my head and I had to admit to myself, this is the president of my country.

Things are looking bleak for South Africa

We have survived bad Presidents in the past and will survive more in the future. Our political system is set in such a way that it minimizes the unilateral actions someone can take so they can claim to be intending on changing X,Y or Z but in reality, unless they build coalitions, will end up very frustrated with gridlock.

a reply to: Joneselius

Out of 320 million Americans, we got Hillary and Trump.

They are supposed to be the cream of the crop.

The best.

(I'll let that sink in a moment)

How do I reconcile this? I can't.

I can try to explain, however.

The establishment picks a pool of candidates for us to choose from. Each and every one of the candidates is pre-approved by the establishment prior to being presented for our "elections".

It gives us the illusion of choice, the illusion of control, the illusion of power.

In reality, nothing much will change regardless of who is in office.

Government will get bigger.
Freedoms will get smaller.
Wars will continue to be fought.
Taxes will continue to climb.
The poor will stay poor.
The wealthy will stay wealthy.

The world will keep on rotating. . . . . . . . .

a reply to: DBCowboy

Maybe so.

Maybe you're right, I don't know. I guess if it's frustrating for me to watch as an outside observer. It must be borderline unbearable for you guys on the inside.

I know you've had bad leaders before. But their level of bloodlust and utter inability to empathise is what I fear the most. Have you had a leader like that before? Who laughs at someone's death?

a reply to: Joneselius

As someone who doesn't live in the US ... why do you care? I don't really pay much attention to whom you Brits elect aside from learning the name of the new guy/gal in charge. You guys make your bed and then you lie in it. We get to do the same.

a reply to: Joneselius

You asked too many questions.
How do you reconcile your two choices now (lets be honest, that's what it is now) for POTUS?

There's no reconciling that problem. So come election day, the next President will be elected by about 40% of the eligible voters because so many eligible voters will stay home. That means another President elected without a mandate followed by another 4 years of obstructionist Congress in which nothing will be accomplished. Of course, we'll be told we have to respect the new President because the "people have chosen" which is total BS.

What is going to become of your once great nation?

If you were here to see it, you'd see that the US is slowly being hollowed out by the Multi-National Corporations and corrupt Government Regulators. What made the US so "great" was the size and GDP/per citizen of its middle class. The middle class is disappearing as the jobs that supported middle class growth and prosperity have disappeared. What you'd see if you visited the US is that as its hollowed out, its coming to more resemble a 2nd world country; its coming to resemble Brazil or Argentina. Cities are hollowed out; now the suburbs are being hollowed out; there's no jobs and what jobs there are go to H1B Visa holders from India and Pakistan. Cities are littered with hundreds of thousands of homeless and homeless shanty towns are springing up across the country.

But here's an even more telling development that signals descent into second world status. We've discovered that the Police have retreated and abandoned efforts to enforce public safety laws in many of the cities. Vehicle Inspection stickers are ignored; cops aren't enforcing seat belt or child safety seat laws; cops wait to respond to "shots fired" calls until the smoke has cleared and the confrontation is over and then they show up to scrape up the dead, take a few witness statements and then disappear.

What's really going on is that the theives, i.e. the Multi-National corporations and their political puppets are robbing the country blind and then offshoring their profits and then themselves as fast as they can.

What does this mean for the rest of the world? The US will no longer be able to play the role of the World Cop; Europe can no longer expect US support to help it out.

Good luck.

a reply to: Joneselius

He may have invoked Obama because Trump is a reaction to the nightmare that is Obama. That's hitting it a bit hard but that's how I think.

What does it mean for the future? No one can know that. I do think when Trump is elected he will take a hard stance against China, Russia and any other of our global competitors. I can see this already- his frank way of talking is encouraging other people to talk and think the same way- certainly me.

"You honestly think Obama is worse than Trump or Hillary?" Yes sir I do. He was elected solely because he was black, and the do-gooders salivate over the opportunity to get a black, then a woman, then a Mexican, then a Jew, then I Don't Know, maybe a Vulcan, then a Klingon, then a Grey and endlessly searching for Equality. The road to Hell is paved with these good intentions.

We need exactly this in the White House- a bad-ass, aggressive, smart, successful, capable White Man. Everyone knows this, consciously or subconsciously, and that's why he has such broad support.

Great questions, I recently thought about making a similar thread, but from an American perspective.

It does kind of floor you, when you sit back and think about it... "wait a minute, we're either going to have Trump or Hillary running this country?" ...all you do is laugh really, an insane, panic kind of laugh.

But... I don't think it has so much to do with America coming up with these two as the potential future leaders as it does with the fact that in a world this populated, the natural order of ruthless competition is going to do nothing but breed psychopathologies. The evidence for this is found among leaders (elected or not) all over the globe.

Accepting this as the pathetic madcap reality it is, as an American, I'm with Trump in the sense that at this point the ships going down either way and I'd rather have some whackyass lunatic drunk Captain that's gonna burn every lifeboat, fire every cannon and probably blow the who ship up before it get's a chance to sink.

A few years from now when you find yourself overly concerned with whatever the latest political conundrum may be, simply ask, what else do you expect in a world this crazy.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Joneselius

As someone who doesn't live in the US ... why do you care? I don't really pay much attention to whom you Brits elect aside from learning the name of the new guy/gal in charge. You guys make your bed and then you lie in it. We get to do the same.

I don't live in the U.S. and I still care very much when the two front runners are complete psychopaths. I truly don't know who scares me more, Hillary or Trump. There's a very high probability that if either of them get elected as president of the United States, the level of war in the world will increase, and that gives other nations a reason to care. The U.S. has the most powerful military on Earth, spending more on defense than the next dozen largest nations combined. That power in the hands of people like Trump and Hillary is no laughing matter, they could end up dragging us all into WWIII. Names such as Rand Paul and Gary Johnson are long forgotten at this point, the only remaining option for sane people is Bernie Sanders, and I say that as some one who is against most forms of socialism. However Bernie seems like the underdog at this point, and if I've learnt anything from previous elections, it's that the underdog never wins.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Joneselius

As someone who doesn't live in the US ... why do you care? I don't really pay much attention to whom you Brits elect aside from learning the name of the new guy/gal in charge. You guys make your bed and then you lie in it. We get to do the same.

The problem is it does effect us.

Thanks to neocon policy what the US does directly spills onto us. So you can't blame us for takeing a intrest!

Plus some people are intrested in learning in what happens outside there own borders.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Joneselius

As someone who doesn't live in the US ... why do you care? I don't really pay much attention to whom you Brits elect aside from learning the name of the new guy/gal in charge. You guys make your bed and then you lie in it. We get to do the same.

This answer chaps me every time. The truth is you make your bed, then the rest of the world gets to lie in it. That's why we give a damn. Some of us out here have even seen these tropes rise to power in the past and lived to talk about it. We're concerned for our neighbours, and it would help the image of Americans around the world if there was more listening instead of assuming their system is the pinnacle of democracy.

Don't get huffy and pretend there's some grand democracy that puts utterly incomprehensible candidates in positions of power. It's a big reality TV show put on to keep people from paying attention to the important questions.

Flame on.

you are right those two choices are insane. that is why I am voting for the third choice Bernie Sanders.

I honestly worry for my country... At 30 I still have yet to have someone worthy of my sacred vote and therefore haven't.

These 2 are seriously the same in many ways I feel.

We will lose a generation or 2 worth of freedoms due to their supreme court nominations. This to me is the most important issue.

Imo it goes like this, Clinton we get more govt bs and more scandals, along with a bolstering of her parties' strength in anyway she can and loss of freedoms such as guns. Trump, with idiots like Kim jong , we will face them and China in a war since we have to play politics with NK every year, he already said about nominating his sister to the court, he will continue to build his personal empire.

Both of these people will further damage the USA's reputation, Clinton because she is bought a liar and war hawk and Trump because he is a big ego maniac.

I could go on but with these 2 there is yet again no boring for me in the general.

a reply to: GraffikPleasure

those that do not vote get the government they deserve. everything you said after "i do not vote" was ignored. your opinion only matters in the debate if you participate.

originally posted by: evenkeel
a reply to: GraffikPleasure

those that do not vote get the government they deserve. everything you said after "i do not vote" was ignored. your opinion only matters in the debate if you participate.

And yet, those that do vote get exactly the same government. How is that fair?

a reply to: Joneselius

Because you don't get the fact that we have no real say in anything..the President has no or only temporary power then gone.

Its the status quo-big business running things. We have little to do or power to do anything about who gets in. No matter who gets in its decided ahead. And not by us.

Even if it appears everyone voted the same and our choice won...its still been decided ahead.