Alternative Media A Factor In Donald Trump's Election?

In a word, yes.  Alternative media played a part.  People will point to the FBI opening the e-mail case and lets not forget Wikileaks, but alternative media hyped the Wikileaks info to the moon as part of their daily effort.  This election process, from the beginning, was all about change.  Not fake change, or change in words only, but real change.  We can debate all day whether they will get that change with Donald Trump, should the electoral votes be cast as expected.  The point is people wanted change, and they were being manipulated from the word go by the main stream corporate (note I didn't say liberal) media.

Even I laughed at Trump when he first started, and I still don't trust him.  He's always been about himself.  If he truly is who he claims to be now, he is a very dangerous man to the global elite.  But, is he that man?  Time will tell.  Early on, people were buying into his message, and a monkey wrench was being thrown into the elite's game plan.   Give us Bush  Vs. Clinton so that the elite win either way.  This is why the Bush family supported Clinton in the end, rather than falling into party line as is the "traditional" practice.

The country is a mess, and there is a growing divide.  We need to heal.  This happens by having real dialogue in this country.  There are many contentious issues, and we need to come to a better consensus.  With Trump, you have the appearance that some of the genuine concerns are finally being addressed.  With Clinton, I'm sorry to say, you were not getting that.  Plus, anybody looking at what's going on in the world had a growing concern that she was going to start a war with Russia.

Clinton was still being force fed to us.  When the Democrats started having debates, I wondered why.  She was long ago ordained by the "rigged" system to be the candidate, because she lost the nomination to Obama in 2004, when she actually won it then.  This was her turn.  Why make it even look like a debate?  She had how many votes on her side before the average everyday Democrat could even choose?  But, they put on a show for the people to make it look fair.  What they didn't count on was Bernie Sanders looking more appealing to the average person.  Oh, but he's an old white man.  Can't have that.

While this was all going on, Trump was being attacked mercilessly by the entire Republican party.  So mercilessly that I still question whether this was a show to position him as the "outsider" candidate.  Even almost all of Fox News was against him.  Hannity eventually came on board.  Glen Beck basically lost his mind going against Trump, if he ever had a mind to begin with.  Despite all of that, Trump was beating them all one by one.  The Alternative Media played a part.

Over on "the other side" the young voters were being swayed by Bernie Sanders.  He correctly identified a big part of the problem, the elite, and he went places Hillary wouldn't go.  She couldn't.  She was their choice.  Don't bite the hand that feeds you.  Never mind the fact that she wasn't catching on in a way that would ever win over anybody who decided early on that she was more of the same thing that has plagued this country since Bush Sr.  You will take her and like it.

Polls, which I greatly distrust and feel should only be used by the campaigns themselves to see if their messages are resonating with the people, even started showing how well Sanders would do against the Republicans.  He matched up well with Trump and stood a very good chance of beating him.  Those younger voters, some of whom are protesting Trump now, were ready for Bernie.  And, had they all fallen in line and obeyed like good Democrats, Clinton might be the president now.

Problem was, they did NOT want her, but the elite were intent on forcing us to take her whether we wanted her or not.  Hillary's time was 2008.  She could have won then, because she would be running against a candidate (John McCain) that was just as corrupt and who did not fight to win nearly as hard has his running mate.  But, the establishment was giving us Obama, and they made her wait her turn.  Problem is, in times like these, there is a shelf life.  The other problem was the alternative media got bigger and bigger in the eight years that followed.

She could not undo the damage of Benghazi and other things that the alternative media were beating into the minds of the hard core listeners.  Even those who were beginning to distrust the media, but don't dive too heavily into alternative media for fear of being branded a kook, were being swayed by it.  They still listen here or there, and Clinton NEVER looks good in the alternative media.  This is one way the alternative media made a difference.  The main baggage Sanders carried with him was the "socialist" label the right stuck him with.  I hate to break it to you, but socialism in certain doses helped build this nation.

Now, Donald Trump may be a lot of things, but stupid is NOT one of them.  I could cite evidence that a run for the presidency has been on his radar for at least 20 years, but he also knew he was not very favorable with the media and would be lambasted by them.  He also had an image problem.  But, he was shrewed.  Doing The Apprentice, a show I detested because I'm not a fan of "reality" TV, made him more savvy in the ways of how to present himself on TV.  One of the people I hear him compared to now is Ronald Reagan, and I see similarities.

Along the way, Trump also cleverly planted seeds within the so called "truth movement" that makes up a large chunk of the alternative media that presented him as being one of them.  The BS "birther" movement against Obama, the 28 pages in the 9/11 investigation and the fact that he could rightly point out that he was never really in favor of a war with Iraq are three instances where he at least had people in the movement saying, "That Trump might not be so bad."

The problem was, he needed more, and he got it when Alex Jones of one of the largest alternative media sites began to endorse him.  This was a move that was almost unheard of within the movement.  Jones basically took the mantle from Bill Cooper, who was gunned down in the back on Guy Fawkes Day 15 years ago while attempting to flee an ambush.  Jones took many of Cooper's stances, though his delivery and accuracy leave a lot to be desired.  But, one of those stances is a mantra within the truth movement that Jones wrongly claims to have founded.  As the saying goes, whether Republican or Democrat, it's two sides of the same coin of the system that controls the masses.  In fact, Jones began to gain national notoriety due to his rant on the topic in the movie Waking Life.

Fast forward to late 2015.  Jones suddenly endorses Trump as this guy outside the system who is a patriot.  He even had Trump on his show.  Rather than offer any time to the the alternative candidates, such as Dr. Jill Stein or Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, a party that Jones claims to be a part of, he embraced Trump completely.  Jones went so far as to begin making stuff up about Johnson to assassinate his character, or at least the things he was saying could not be proven.  Hearsay.

From that time, while the mainstream media payed their part in anointing Clinton, they failed to dispatch of Trump.  If we take this all at face value and we weren't being payed, this outsider Trump broke through.  What Infowars and other alternative outlets could do was strongly defend any attack that came after Trump and put it out over the web via their websites, videos and social media sites.  They could also hammer Clinton relentlessly.  True, her history made that easy, but Jones and others put a big magnifying glass over her.

Trump used the alternative media very effectively.  He only appeared with Jones the one time, which was also smart.  His good friend Roger Stone worked the alternative media outlets.  Trump could distance himself from them and deal with the main stream media, trumpeting the usual rhetoric of media bias and the plot against him and all of that, which would effectively help get the voters on the Republican reservation to stay behind him despite his flaws.  That kept things closer than the media would have you believe. 

If they really believed Clinton had it in the bag all along, which is how they sold it to the people, it makes me wonder if this election was meant to be rigged from the start, some of them knew it and something went wrong.  Don't think for a moment that with electronic voting it can't be rigged.  It is easier to rig it now.  Whether or not this was happening now, I'll save for another time.

For Trump to win, he needed that little extra, and that's where there alternative media came in.  There is that segment that would ether not vote or vote third party, and Jones was taking to them non stop for about a year about why they needed to support Trump.  Oh, you can trust him.  He is a patriot.  He was appealing to disenfranchised people who have lost jobs, homes, aren't making much money and feel they are being sold out by the system.  This is Jones' base, and it only strengthened when the media referred to them as racists and engaged in a game that could be considered reverse racism.

This election was a vote for change, and this is also why Johnson and Stein received so many votes.  Johnson received almost three and a half times as many votes over his previous Libertarian record four years ago with over four million votes.  Dr. Stein grabbed 1.2 million votes, the second highest in Green Party history.  This happened despite the media ignoring them, mocking Johnson and the lies Jones told about Johnson to win voters over to Trump.  Over six million  voters ignored either major candidate.

Hillary had virtually no chance of appealing to the growing disenfranchised vote the way Sanders did.  She was correctly identified as part of the problem by them.  Sanders may very well have won this election.  The media maintained the traditional left vs right, two party system presentation, and Trump, via the policies he spoke of, fixing immigration, better trade deals, tax breaks, creating jobs in America and helping blacks and Hispanics with loans to help them build businesses to revive struggling inner cities, appeared to be the voice of change.  Whether that's who he is or not remains to be seen.

Don't discount the fact that the alternative media helped get Trump enough votes in certain swing states to get the vote in his favor.  It certainly was a factor.  Sites like Breitbart and Drudge might be considered fringe in the mainstream media, but they are close enough to the mainstream right that they aren't really alternative.  Infowars, on the other hand, went through a paradigm shift that leaves the door open for somebody within the legitimate truth movement in the Bill Cooper spirit to step up and fill a void without giving it the sort of corporate feel you have now with Jones and Infowars.

Jones put his rear end on the line with his support of Trump and already there are indications that you will see more of the same when it comes to cabinet choices.  Jones is sort of stuck now, because if that happens, what does he do if Trump goes the way of our recent presidents?  He supported it, and it would be hard to back pedal without losing his listeners.  If he sells it, his empire will crumble.  There's been an effort to make that happen since the left has put several alternative news sites of their own out there that put focus on taking Jones down.  The problem is, they are out of touch as well.

Labeling Jones as a tin foil hat wearing kook, conspiracy theorist and the rest of it only builds him up higher to the people who know we are being lied to and read the documentable things that have happened.  These outlets will never take down a guy like Jones by belittling the truth in some of the messages he has put out.  Focusing on his unprovable rhetoric, his tendency to fly off the handle and go with news that is incorrect just to be first or exposing his method, will begin to wake people up to who and what he truly is.

In the aftermath of all of this, the losing side picks up the pieces and tries to figure out what went wrong.  There could be a movement to overturn the Electoral College in the future.  Perhaps this is a discussion that needs to happen.  For now, the Democratic Party is trying to figure out where they go from here.  Well, they should go where they all should go.  Back to basics, issue by issue.  We have a divide in this country and it won't change if we keep talking at each other instead of to each other.  Simply taking over the party to run a better presidential campaign may win it next time, but it won't be good enough to bring us all together.

You will hear arguments of merit from either side.  Whether it's boarder security, a path to citizenship, national security, concern over jobs and taxes, the educational system, how the food we eat is produced and the safety thereof, environmental concerns, housing and homeless issues, LBGT issues, and on and on.  The concern of the Democrats should be what they stand for and not just how to help the people, but how to not be a hindrance to success once people achieve it.  It shouldn't be just about propaganda and getting people to begin thinking a certain way, but standing up and fighting for things we can all believe in.

The racism has to stop on all ends.  This white male bashing is ridiculous.  Old white men built this country along with black men, Hispanic men, Japanese men...  Let's not forget the women.  One of the best ways to end this is to begin thinking of ourselves as just Americans and stop racially dividing ourselves.  Racial politics happen on all sides, and it needs to stop.  Until we stop looking at things the way we do, we're going to continue to be a country that has elections where the winner barely wins because their appeal doesn't cross party lines.