I've stated this before: I'm 73,have watched collectivism gain ground every day, every year, and have zero "hope" that there will be a turn around on the slide of the USA into oblivion. However, at this point (the election) the choices are to elect the Whore of Islam and watch the slide turn into a cliff or Trump, who cannot stop it but might be a speed-bump on the slide and a bit more entertaining to watch.

Too late. The Cloward/Piven/Alynski "reboot" is now in effect but, unlike Jericho, it will not be positive.

Well, sure, there's a reason why dystopic fiction appeals to me (and a lot of us actually) for precisely the reason you describe - it's an involuntary reboot.

But in the real world, that's unlikely to happen, so we have to either find our zen place about the shit-show, or plot a course of slow correction towards something better.

Having been a registered and somewhat active Libertarian for over 40 years now, that has been increasingly disappointing. Gary Johnson sounded better 4 years ago, but garnered only 1% of the vote. Today he's polling much better, but has obviously lost his way, leaving us with nobody worth voting for... that's right, NOBODY!

There was a time when the LP was based on Principle, but those days are long gone. Today's Libertarians are scattered all over the philosophical map. Very recently I read the Arizona's Libertarian Platform, https://www.azlp.org/platform.php -- reading that was a SHOCK! Nothing within that suggests that Mises and Rothbard might survive. That platform seems both obsolete and awful,.

All that leaves me feeling both "homeless" and hopeless.

What we need is to reboot the USA, as in the series Jericho on netflix. Not with bombs, though. their premise was that the system was so messed up and infected by cronyism that it had to be dismantled. good series tho

Hijacking a party of misfits is way less of a challenge than unfucking democracy.

Apples and BMWs.

Agreed. Donald Trump is a self-made business emperor. Hillary Clinton sells government policy to the highest bidder. I know which of them I would rather have.

You know better than this. To begin with, don't just say to write in someone. Unless everyone writes in the same someone, you'll have a smattering of votes each for a thousand candidates. Add this to it: even for a write-in candidate to appear on the ballot, you have to demonstrate, to the satisfaction of the State Division of Elections, that your write-in candidate has a slate of elector-candidates ready for the State to appoint them and tell them to go about their Constitutional business. That's why write-in candidacies for President never work.

And about those third parties: the last time we had a third-party candidate try to knock off the Republican candidate for President, was Teddy Roosevelt against William Howard Taft. That gave us Woodrow Wilson. And we all know how that wound up.

"Nobody stays in this valley by faking reality in any manner whatever." -- John Galt

He hijacked the republican party from the outside, though, by just speaking out. Sanders tried a hijacking, but failed. He did expose what was going on , though.

Catch-22.

You can't "unrig" it from outside, because the ones who rig it are the ones who make the rules. You HAVE to get inside to unrig it.

And I little to no faith that HucksterTrump will do anything to unrig the system.

First, unrig the system so that the people can actually support a third party candidate and win.
Second, get a candidate who is far more intellectually consistent than Johnson.

Today, what passes for Libertarianism is a mish-mash of Libertarian and liberal conepts. The prevailing attitude seems to be that they base their premises on what is right, not what is ideological and as a result, straddles both left and right agendas. Johnson's proposal is a perfect example of this.

I think that before we even consider a third party candidate the election system has to be unrigged so that the two major parties dont have a hold on it anymore. Trump is essentially an anti-establishment third party candidate, but he figured a way to hijack the republican party (much to their dismay). He is paying the price for that, as the establishment wants his campaign dead, dead, dead.

After the system is unrigged, massive education has to be mounted with the populace so they understand what government should and actually can do. They have to stop listening to the promises of the Hillarys. The president is only 1/3 of the government anyway- and cant do much at all without the congress going along. Plus, no president that I can remember actually carried through on their promises, including Obama (who promised to get us out of useless wars- and 8 years later we are still there)

we will get EITHER Hillary OR Trump this time. Hillary is the posterchild for cronyism. She sells government access, then hides it with a personal email server. Isnt this the Nixon philosophy raised to substantially higher levels??? Imagine how she would sell us out as president and make behind the scenes deals.

Trump is a straight shooter- he tells it like he sees it (politically incorrect). We need that . If all he did was destroy political correctness, I would consider his presidency helpful to the country. In addition, he will be far better than Hillary in foreign relations and at least stick up for USA and get some respect for us. Economically, he has a business background and wont do STUPID things like Hillary has and will do in the future. Johnson will go nowhere in this election, period. It would take far more consistency and education of the populace before he could hope to win.

Write in someone. There is also the possibility I posted a couple of days ago that if enough people vote third party we can throw the election to the House. (https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...)

He must have gotten calls of disgust so he changed his position. HMM- another weathervane politician I suppose

Given the choice is Hillary OR Trump this time around, the rational choice has to be Trump. He isnt perfect by any means, but a lot more sensible than Hillary, and at least hasnt shown us the extreme crookedness that Hillary has. She is the posterchild for cronyism.

Libertarians arent philosophically coherent and consistent. Ayn Rand even disliked them for that, and she was right.

Johnson also wanted weed to be decriminalized, but not other drugs. Either prohibition is wrong, or its not, in my view. Remove criminal penalties for producing, selling, and using any drug a person wants to ingest. The only way to go.

Maybe the marijuana he smokes has led him astray.

but you are GOING to get either Trump OR Hillary. Trump is 1000 times better than Hillary. Not perfect but the only choice if you at least want to slow down the advancement of socialism.

He is a terrible spokesperson for liberty. A carbon tax on the economy is the equivalent of Obamacare on the medical service industry. The LAST thing we need is another tax that brings more money to the government.

Gone is whatever vote I might have given to Johnson (not that he would have won anyway).

An again - it comes down to, which would you prefer:

1.) Someone who is more adherent to our dogma, but will gain less traction from the undecided/NOTA crowd?
2.) Someone who is less adherent to our dogma, but will potentially be able to bring people into the tent and at least open some doors to us?

SINCE we were not going to win either way, it seems better to bring people into the tent, let them have some of their statist ideas still, and slowly wean them off. That seems to have a greater likelihood of long-term success than insisting that the undecideds should go "cold turkey" on a lot of the things they've been indoctrinated into.

Robert, I wish I knew a good alternative. I happen to live in a gerrymandered district, so my vote is irrelevant no matter what it is. I do happen to think that nothing could be worse than Hillary.

For what it's worth:http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/26/lib...