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.

A Few Thoughts On The 2016 Presidential Election Outcome

I had no horse in the Presidential race, because I didn't support either of the two major candidates, although I dislike our President Elect less.  I think we dodged a bullet and perhaps, I say perhaps, we've slowed the decline in this country. Too soon to tell.

I see the stars that are supposed to be leaving if their girl doesn't win. While I certainly won't miss any of them, I'm sad to see Snoop Dogg on that list. It is my hope that he'll spark one up, legally now, write a rap song about it and forget about it. If he can do that with Samuel Jackson, that would be great.

Mr. Trump has said a lot of things, and one of them has to do with lifting up the black community by giving them tax breaks to help build the inner cities again. So, these two men, whom I've found entertaining, could be a part of inspiring blacks to step up and be the leaders in "Making America Great Again" that Mr. Trump would like them to be.

I watched the election in amazement. I expected that the fix was in, and I personally believe it was. The problem was, they couldn't fix it enough. I believe Mrs. Clinton may have been in shock, which led to her waiting to give a concession speech.

I want to emphasize that "Liberal Media" is not a real term to me. It's "Corporate Media" for reasons I could get into another time. You WOULD NOT have Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News and so on if it were truly a Liberal Media. People are being manipulated, but it's much more sophisticated than that, in my opinion.

Anyway, the media was in shock too. You can say they were wrong in the polls, which they were, but the fix was in. The problem was the people who voted for Mr. Trump did so in bigger numbers than they could switch to Clinton or others. Some who did vote Trump unfortunately didn't ultimately do so. The fix was supposed to be in. The media could have called the electoral win much sooner, and they did not. The media may have even been hoping for a 2000-like controversy. The media was NOT on Trump's side at any time and tried to bury him at every opportunity.

I question why Clinton did not accept her obvious defeat. If she has the "leadership skills" she boasts about, sometimes that means coming out at a time like this and being gracious. That didn't happen until this morning. Why? Well, at the time it was known that she lost, Trump still led the popular vote, and there were also protests getting started with typical vandalism in several areas.

She probably knew that the Popular Vote would swing her way for all to see, and we can engage in the argument of whether Electoral Votes should decide things. I wrote in one of my books how I thought there could be riots if Popular and Electoral had different winners and admitted I was surprised it didn't happen in 2000. Well, the anger is obvious in this country now. Will this election be what finally sparks it?

Nobody should be surprised by this outcome. This whole election was about people wanting REAL change, not slogans that mean nothing. The powers that be buried it at every opportunity.  Bernie Sanders should have been the Democrat against Trump, but the powers that be robbed him. There was growing interest in the third party alternatives, Dr. Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, and the media ignored them and did their best to bury them.

By the way, Johnson still got over 4 million votes, the biggest total in Libertarian Party history. Dr. Stein had 1.2 million, which is the biggest Green total since Ralph Nader in 2000. Despite their effort to bury the third party candidates, over 6 million voted for them. Imagine what might have been if Dr. Stein and Johnson had been allowed into the debate? But, they weren't allowed. That is NOT what the powers that be wanted.

And, the powers that be CLEARLY wanted Clinton. I predicted three years ago that we'd get forced another Bush or Clinton on election day, and they tried to give us Clinton. They did not want Trump, and they tried to make him go away. How many of you thought that man was a joke? I did. I've watched this guy since the 1980's, and was never particularly a fan. All the people lamenting the NFL because players are overpaid and not standing for the National Anthem, we had a pretty neat alternative called the USFL in the 1980's until Trump got a hold of it.

That is NOT a deal breaker to me, and there is more to life than sports. I've looked at things he's said and done through the years and just shook my head. He's always been about self promotion and money. I just figured he'd run long enough to turn it into a business opportunity, a new book, a TV show or network or whatever. How many of you thought the same thing?

Then, he butted heads with Bush. I admit that was a beautiful thing. What he said to Mrs. Clinton in that debate about locking her up... Priceless. He would NOT go away. Ultimately, I could not make the choice between the lesser of two evils, though I felt he was slightly less evil. I also don't believe he's in the pocket of the same powers that have run this county since Bush Sr. However, there is more than one faction of "The Elite" running this world, and they themselves fight for control. I also hold out hope in my book that perhaps there are those in that group who actually care about us commoners. It is my belief that the people pulling the strings of the other recent presidents do not care about us.

So, is Trump different? What makes him better than Obama, Clinton or either Bush? Can he make it to Reagan or Kennedy level? That brings me to another thought. I have listened to what our President Elect has been saying. Releasing the 28 pages? Cutting taxes and building our country, investigating Clinton, term limits to remove career politicians, securing our borders, bringing jobs back to this country and on and on...

I listened to that speech he gave early in the morning on election day in Michigan, and damned if that wasn't inspiring. Was that Reagan or Trump? Does he mean it? I went to bed thinking to myself that this is a time for Trump believers to pray to God (Well, I believe) or all that is good for a couple of reasons.

Pray that this man believes what he says as far as fixing this country, really cares about us and will be working hard to do what he says. He will need all the help he can get, because the powers he is fighting are dug in deep now. Secondly, pray for his safety. If he truly means it, he is not a safe man now. I mean, look at Reagan and Kennedy. They tried to kill Reagan and they did kill Kennedy, a public execution that our country still hasn't healed from all these years later.

Pray for the healing of this country. I don't know about you, but I can feel it. The planet, the people... There's a sad energy or something that I have felt for years, but we can still fix it. We have to start caring. We have to reach out to people who still hold different views and find common ground. We are all Americans. We are all citizens of this planet. We all bleed red, and we ultimately have a lot more in common than we may realize.

I don't think our country can handle much more of things going the way they have in recent years. If you sincerely blame Obama and somehow ignore Bush, you are deluding yourself. If you think either of them truly ran the show... If Trump doesn't believe his own words, it will become obvious quickly and things will just get worse. If he believes it, the work is just beginning. It will be a long, long process, because we didn't get here over night.

Don't hate others who didn't vote the way you did. I do not hate anybody who voted their conscience. I know a lot of my friends on social media voted Trump. You wanted it, you got it. Don't expect him to do it all. He still needs you to be leaders by doing your part to actually help make this country great. I have good friends who voted Clinton, and I still love them because they are people I have seen do their part to make this country great without a politician telling them to.

That's my opinion on this election. Live your lives to the fullest, love with all of your heart and be happy. Real change in the wold starts locally and spreads from city to city, county to county, state to state and so on.

 

Was Laverne Cox MIscast In The New Rocky Horror Picture Show

I happened to turn on the TV and saw that The Rocky Horror Picture Show was on Fox. It was a remake. I'm not going to start a rant on remakes here and why most of them are so bad. Usually, it has to do with the "modern spin" they always choose to put on a movie in a misguided effort to make it better.

I had nothing better to do. I decided to give this version a chance. It only took until Frank N Furter entered the picture to see that this was going to be a different show and would surely create a controversy. Transgender actress Laverne Cox took on the role.

This brings the first question. Was she doing it just because it would be fun to take on the role that made Tim Curry famous, or was she wanting to start the debate that her appearing in the role would cause? If it was the latter, that was a brilliant move.

Laverne's appearance in this role started the conversation about the various sub groups within the transgender community. You see, the T in LGBT has it's own big umbrella. There are cross dressers, sissies, transvestites, gender fluid, transgender (pre op, non op and post op) and other groups I'm sure I'm forgetting.

When Curry made the role famous, he was clearly playing a bisexual transvestite. The "horror" of the movie had to do with the idea that he had captured this couple and would have his way sexually with them, basically against their will, and that they might eventually submit and become one of them. There was the "stigma" of being gay.  Plus, you had the sense that Frank was dangerous and could snap at any time and kill them if the mood took him.

One of the debates over Cox taking this role is that she is transgender. She identifies as a woman. That's what transgender is. You don't identify in the gender in which you were born, and you seek to transition to the other gender, male to female or female to male. That's what transgender is.

Transvestite is entirely different. It's a clothing and sexual fetish. You may be a man who will dress in societal norms, and then at times you will dress in clothing and go for the whole appearance of the opposite gender. And, sex is one of the goals for a transvestite. There's sometimes the appeal of the blurry lines. If you are a male dressing as female and have sex with a man as his "woman" of the moment, you aren't gay because of how you were dressed. This is the way some transvestites think. They might never engage in sex with a man if they are dressed as a man themselves.

So, knowing that the original movie has a male transvestite in the lead role, was Laverne Cox the appropriate person for this part? There's big debate over that, and I'll add my two cents. I don't believe she belonged in that role, and it took some of the edge away from the movie.

There's a question some men may not want to honestly answer to anybody, but I'll ask it anyway. If Tim Curry's portrayal of Frank forced himself on you, would you submit or would you fight it? If Cox's portrayal did the same thing, what would be your answer? I'm willing to bet that more men would play with Laverne. I know it's an uncomfortable question to ask, because people are still freaked out by the transgender community enough to commit violence against them in 2016.

When it comes to the role, I heard it suggested that Laverne was just too pretty to pull it off. I agree that she is a beautiful woman, and in this case, that's not what the role calls for. In the original, you know Frank is a he. In the remake, the female pronouns are used more, because that's just natural for Laverne. She is a transgender woman. I would never disrespect her by suggesting otherwise.

The thing that freaks the heterosexual male out about transgender women is that some women have done so much to make themselves beautiful and feminine that the men themselves can't "tell" by looking at them. So, some of these women will appeal to certain men enough to want to have sex with them. When the subject of her "born gender" comes up, it messes with the man's head, and the gay discussion takes over.

Hence, the biggest reason the T is in LBGBT when the T has needs that don't always jibe with the LGB. Many transgender people don't want to fight a cause, be in anybody's face or any of that. They are the gender they present and want to be accepted as they are, not talked about in terms of what they "used to be" or any of that.

This is another struggle that so many go through in the transgender community as they start their transition. People can "tell" what gender they were born just by looking at them. Adding further insult is the fact that despite the efforts to present themselves in public, there are some people who refuse to acknowledge them properly when they can see the obvious effort being made. She is still a he to them, and that brings up another insensitive comment I read in the post movie discussion.

It was the discussion about whether Laverne herself has had the surgery, which I personally feel is out of bounds. Somebody made the rather disrespectful comment that no matter what she had "cut off" she was still a he or an it. To those who don't understand, these thoughts go through the minds of many who transition, and some are still suicidal over the whole thing. They don't doubt that they are doing the right thing. What they struggle with is the idea that they will never completely be that gender, no matter how they look.

People like to rate a transgender person on how they look. She's passable, that's a man and so on. Cox herself was judged in portraying Frank, and some said she was just too pretty for the role. The role required a man in woman's clothing. This may be true, but Hollywood loves to miscast. Consider all of the transgender roles that clearly called for somebody like Cox, yet went to naturally born or "cisgender" women. Yes, there are transgender actresses who constantly get overlooked.

I don't personally feel this version of Rocky Horror measured up to the 1975 movie. How could it? But, Laverne and the cast gave it their all, and I can't fault them for that. Cox had fun with the role, and she intentionally or unintentionally sparked a conversation that can lead to better understanding of the transgender community. That's a good thing.

Even in this discussion, the Trump vs Clinton election had to rear it's ugly head. Curry had a role as the narrator, and he's still recovering from a stroke suffered in 2012. Somebody asked a question that appeared insensitive because they discussed his performance not being so good. Automatically, this person was branded as hateful and intolerant, which apparently can only be the case if you are a Republican.

The reality is, ignorance has no political, ideological, racial or religious preference. We are all guilty of it from time to time. Fortunately, we all have the opportunity to grow and learn as human beings. One of the nice things about Laverne Cox taking on the role of Frank N Furter is that it gives people a chance to engage in a discussion about transgender issues and come to more of an understanding.